Former heavyweight champion George Foreman and footballers Diogo Jota and Denis Law were among the sports stars who died in 2025.
Here is the second part of AFP's review of the sporting figures we lost this year:
BOXING
GEORGE FOREMAN died on March 21st aged 76.
Foreman was the last of the great quartet of heavyweights with Muhammad Ali, Ken Norton and 'Smokin' Joe' Frazier that produced memorable bouts in the 1970s.
Foreman's talent was evident early on when winning Olympic gold in 1968.
He won the heayweight title in 1973, inflicting Frazier's first defeat but was to be dethroned by Ali a year later in the epic "Rumble in the Jungle" in then Zaire.
While Ali was the people's favourite, Foreman was perceived as sullen and unlikeable.
However, 20 years later he had reinvented himself as a jocular personality and, aged 45, he astonishingly was once again crowned heavyweight world champion, taking down Michael Moorer, 19 years his junior.
"You want to leave something; you really do. I mean, in the end, statues and all those things, that doesn't mean anything," said Foreman. "Leave something that we're all going to benefit from."
JOE BUGNER died on September 1st aged 75.
The nearly man of a great era of heavyweight boxers, Bugner went the distance on two occasions with Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
While a world title eluded him he was crowned European and British champion when he defeated ageing national treasure Henry Cooper in 1971.
Bugner, who was a young boy when his parents fled Hungary after the Soviet Union invaded in 1956, later moved to Australia.
In between a film career – including starring in "Street Fighter" with Jean-Claude Van Damme – there were a couple of comebacks but he ended his days in a care home suffering from dementia.
Bugner felt he never received the recognition he merited.
"When I beat Henry Cooper I was no longer British, I was a Hungarian refugee and that was just ridiculous," he said.
RICKY HATTON took his own life on September 14th aged 46.
The popular English boxer's funeral attracted the likes of Tyson Fury and Liam Gallagher of Oasis and thousands lined the route in his home town of Manchester.
Hatton was a popular, larger-than-life character who unified the light-welterweight division and also won a world welterweight title.
Hatton, who won 45 of his 48 professional bouts, admitted he struggled with drinking and drugs.
"People say, 'We remember the good times.' Well I remember the bad times," Hatton told The Times in 2012.
SWIMMING
MAYUMI NARITA died on September 5th aged 55 of cancer.
Japan's "Queen of the Water" won 15 Paralympics gold medals – including six at the 2000 Sydney Games and set five world records to boot in Australia.
She is Japan's most-successful Paralympian and the fifth most decorated female athlete in Paralympic history across all sports.
TENNIS
ANGELA MORTIMER-BARRETT died on August 25th aged 93.
She battled hard to get to the top, and for want of money once spent the night at London's Paddington Station on the way back from a tournament.
Mortimer-Barrett came out on top in an all-British women's Wimbledon final in 1961 against Christine Truman, who at 20 was nine years her junior.
The partially-deaf Mortimer-Barrett had prior to that also won the French (1955) and Australian (1958) titles.
FRED STOLLE died on March 5th aged 86 of cancer.
He may have won two Grand Slam titles French but it is what came before that the resilient Australian is probably best known for.
Known as "Fiery", he is still the only man to have lost his first five Grand Slam singles finals – four of them to compatriot Roy Emerson in a golden era for Australian tennis.
Emerson was to beat him in one more Grand Slam final, Wimbledon, in 1965, sandwiched in between Stolle getting the better of another two Australians, Tony Roche in that year's French final, and John Newcombe at the 1966 US Championships.
CRICKET
HAROLD 'DICKIE' BIRD died on September 22nd aged 92.
One of the best-known umpires of his generation, he stood in 66 tests between 1973 and 1996 as well as 69 men's one-day internationals, including three World Cup finals.
Bird had a modest playing career for Yorkshire and Leicestershire but made his name as an international umpire, wearing his trademark white cap.
He was given a guard of honour at Lord's by England and India players before his final test.
Yorkshire and England batting legend Geoffrey Boycott, who knew Bird from the age of 15, described him as "comic and lovable" and "daft as a brush".
BOB COWPER died on May 11th aged 84 of cancer
He was the only Australian batsman to have made a triple century (307) in an Ashes test in Australia and at over 12 hours, holds the record for the longest ever test innings in Australia.
He was fortunate to get the chance as he had been dropped for the fourth test of the 1965/66 series for batting too slowly, but regained his place in the fifth and final test.
"My God! That must have been the most boring innings you've ever had to sit through," he told the crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
BERNARD JULIEN died on October 4th aged 75.
A dashing West Indian allrounder whose career encompassed the high of winning the 1975 World Cup and the low of a lifetime ban for a rebel tour of apartheid-era South Africa.
Julien suffered from the pressure of being hailed by some as the successor to the legendary Garry Sobers.
The two of them put on a West Indian record seventh wicket partnership of 155 – in just under two hours – at Lord's in 1973.
However, he brought the curtain down on his international career in ignominious fashion in the early 1980s when he joined West Indies rebel tours of South Africa, then considered a pariah state due to its apartheid policy, for a reported £60 000 ($80 000).
BOBBY SIMPSON died on August 16th aged 89
A former Australian cricket captain who skippered them in 39 of his 62 tests, he then had an immensely successful spell as their first fulltime coach in the 1980s.
He answered his country's call when aged 41 he returned to the national side after it lost several key players to the Kerry Packer World Series competition.
"Bob's decision to come out of retirement to successfully lead the Australian team during the advent of World Series Cricket in 1977 was a wonderful service to the game," said Cricket Australia chair Mike Baird.
ROBIN SMITH died on December 1st aged 62
Known as the "Judge", the South Africa-born batter played 62 tests for England between 1988 and 1996. He scored 4 236 test runs, including nine centuries, and 2 419 runs in 71 one-day internationals.
He was renowned for his fearless batting against the world's fastest bowlers, but he struggled with mental health and alcohol-related problems in retirement.
CYCLING
CHARLES COSTE died on October 29th aged 101
At the time of his death Coste was the oldest former Olympic champion – gymnast Agnes Keleti had died in January aged 103 – having won team track pursuit gold at the 1948 London Games.
The medals ceremony did not go according to plan, as he recounted to AFP: "They gave us our bouquets and then they told us 'there will be no Marseillaise because we can't find the record!'"
Coste was the oldest torch bearer at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, which he described as "one of the most beautiful moments of my long life".
FIGURE SKATING
DICK BUTTON died on January 30th aged 95.
The American was a two-time Olympic champion and a quintuple world champion. He became the first skater to successfully perform a double axel, when he won gold in the 1948 Winter Games at St Moritz.
Not content with that he upped the ante at the 1952 Olympics in Oslo when he was the first to land a triple jump.
WRESTLING
BUVAISAR SAITIEV died on March 2nd aged 49 in unexplained circumstances.
The three-time Olympic freestyle champion for Russia (1996/2004/2008) and sextuple world gold medallist is widely regarded to be the greatest of all time.
Mystery surrounded his death, with a Russian wrestling official saying he died of a heart attack, while his wife maintained that he fell from a second storey window in Moscow.
ATHLETICS
GREG BELL died on January 25th aged 94.
He grew up in abject poverty, living in a chicken house until he was 12.
Encountering racism "which he detested", he joined the US Army and was crowned Olympic long jump champion in Melbourne in 1956 despite having strained a leg muscle.
"It was one of the worst performances I could have imagined," he said modestly.
After athletics, he became a dentist, working till he was 89.
THELMA HOPKINS died on January 10th aged 88.
Born in England but brought up in Northern Ireland she was at one point the high jump world record holder and won Olympic silver representing Britain in the 1956 Melbourne Games.
Also an accomplished field hockey player, she was capped 40 times by Ireland.
Mary Peters, who was to win Olympic pentathlon gold at the 1972 Games in Munich, said Hopkins was an idol of hers and she had been a "pioneer" for Northern Irish women athletes.
BASEBALL
BETSY JOCHUM died on May 31st aged 104.
A pathfinder for women's baseball, she was known as 'Sockum' Jochum and was one of the 60 original members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, set up during World War II.
It inspired the 1992 Hollywood film starring Madonna called "A League of Their Own".
BASKETBALL
LENNY WILKENS died on November 9th aged 88.
A Hall of Famer as both a player and a coach he was a nine-time NBA All-Star and twice led the league in assists.
Wilkens coached the Seattle SuperSonics to their only NBA title in 1979. His 2 487 games coached is an NBA record.
"He influenced the lives of countless young people as well as generations of players and coaches," said NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
BIATHLON
LAURA DAHLMEIER died on July 28th aged 31 in a mountaineering accident.
The German was a seven-time world champion who at the 2018 Winter Olympics became the first woman biathlete to win both the sprint and the pursuit at the same Games.
She retired aged just 25 and turned to mountain running and mountaineering. She was killed by falling rocks while climbing at an altitude of 5 700 metres (18 700 feet) in the Karakoram range in Pakistan.
According to her wishes her body remained there.
CHESS
BORIS SPASSKY died on February 27th aged 88.
Soviet grand master who was world champion from 1969-72 and is best remembered for his epic Cold War clash with American Bobby Fischer in 1972.
Fischer had never beaten Spassky before their duel in Reykjavik and the Russian was never to reach the heights again.
He moved to France in 1976 with his third wife and became a French citizen, although he returned to Russia in 2012.
"I prefer to have good relations with my opponent. My chess suffers if I have to play a man I consider unfriendly," said Spassky.