PARIS // France was plunged into mourning on Tuesday after the deaths of three sports stars, including an Olympic champion swimmer and one of the world’s best sailors, in a helicopter crash while filming a reality TV show in Argentina.
Champion sailor Florence Arthaud, Olympic gold medallist swimmer Camille Muffat and Olympic bronze medallist boxer Alexis Vastine were among 10 people killed when two helicopters filming the survival series Dropped smashed into each other in the rugged mountains of the northwestern La Rioja province.
“The whole of France is in mourning this morning,” said prime minister Manuel Valls.
Production company Adventure Line Productions (ALP) said it would “of course” immediately stop production of the television series and repatriate those involved.
Rioja provincial spokesman Horacio Alarcon said there were no survivors in the crash, which happened in good weather conditions on Monday.
Local media showed the wreckage of the two helicopters in flames on dry scrubland.
Alongside the three sports stars, five French TV crew members and two Argentine pilots died in the crash, a police source said.
Arthaud, 57, was considered one of the best sailors in the world, a woman who conquered what had been a strictly male-dominated sport. Her titles included the 1990 Route du Rhum, the most prestigious race to cross the Atlantic solo.
Muffat, 25, was one of the top swimmers in French history, winning three medals at the London Olympics in 2012, including gold in the 400-metres freestyle.
She shocked the sporting world in June 2014 by announcing her sudden retirement at the age of 24, exhausted by the long hours of training in the pool.
Vastine, 28, won a bronze medal at the Beijing games in 2008 in the light welterweight category.
President Francois Hollande led the tributes, saying the “brutal death of our compatriots is an immense sadness”.
Muffat’s former trainer Fabrice Pellerin told French radio station RTL: “What’s hard is to reconcile the image I have of Camille, who was unsinkable, with what happened.”
“To have in my head this strong girl, full of the joys of life, and then everything stops. I have known her since she was 13 so it’s like I’ve lost someone in my family.”
Dropped involved eight sports stars being dropped into inhospitable environments for an adventure and survival-themed show.
Fellow contestant, former France and Arsenal football star Sylvain Wiltord, said on Twitter: “I am sad for my friends. I am horrified. I’m speechless. I don’t want to say anything.”
Other stars taking part in the show – none of them hurt in the accident – were swimmer Alain Bernard, cyclist Jeannie Longo, snowboarder Anne-Flore Marxer and figure skater Philippe Candeloro.
In 2013, ALP was involved in another French reality television accident, when a contestant in survival show Koh-Lanta died of a heart attack during filming in Cambodia and a doctor on the programme then committed suicide.
The Rioja provincial government said a cast and crew of around 80 people, mostly French nationals, had descended on the area to film Dropped.
Shooting began in late February in Ushuaia, at the southern tip of South America in the glacial terrain of Patagonia.
It then moved to La Rioja, where scenic mountain landscapes are popular with tourists.
The crash happened around 5pm local time near the town of Villa Castelli, about 1,100 kilometres north of the capital Buenos Aires.
One of the helicopters involved was provided by the provincial government and the other by a police force in the neighbouring province of Santiago del Estero.
* Agence France-Presse