Pes 2013 Crash Exhibition Match
Heike Fallago
For 10 weeks, the survivors had to deal with the extremes before they were rescued, including subzero temperatures, two back-to-back avalanches and near starvation, left with no choice but to eat from the remains of their deceased friends to stay alive.
Parrado and others who lived through the ordeal share their incredible story of fear, loss and survival in an ABC News Studios documentary \"Prisoners of The Snow\" premiering on ABC on May 22 at 9 p.m. ET and streaming on Hulu the next day. In addition to interviews with survivors, mountaineers and survival experts, the two-hour program will include photographs taken by the passengers who lived through the 72-day ordeal.
On Oct. 12, 1972, the flight was supposed to take the amateur Old Christians Club rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, for an exhibition match against the Old Boys Club, an English rugby team in Santiago.
Despite high winds, the next afternoon, the plane took off again for Santiago. The Fairchild aircraft was unable to climb to the necessary 26,000 feet to fly directly over the Andes Mountain range, so the pilots opted for a U-shaped route where they were able to fly lower through a mountain pass, according to aviation expert and ABC News contributor John Nance.
With the air traffic control clearance, the pilots began their descent. However, they didn't realize it was too soon, and that they were headed straight in the heart of the Andes, Nance said. The pilot was unable to clear the ridgeline and the airplane hit the mountain.
Two of the survivors who had medical training, including Canessa who was a medical student at the time, quickly scrambled to tend to the wounded. Parrado's mother died in the crash and his sister was badly injured. She died days later.
Eventually, the survivors used metal from the wreckage to construct a device that melted the snow to water using sunlight. But their food supply was limited, according to mountineer Ricardo Pena. Survivors said in those first few days, they would share a little square of chocolate or a little bit of cracker with a little bit of fish in it, and some wine.
After long discussions and out of desperation, the survivors said the group came to a painful decision to harvest the bodies of the dead passengers for food. It was their only option for survival. They compared it to taking communion.
As the group continued to plan for a way to safely look for help, they would face another deadly obstacle on day 17. Two avalanches swiftly raged down the mountain and the fuselage became entombed in snow with everyone inside.
\"It's a very, very humiliating thing to eat a dead body,\" Canessa said. \"I thought of my mother that I had unique chance of telling her not to cry anymore, that I was alive. And to do that, I had to buy time, and to buy time, I had to eat the dead bodies.\"
Canessa, Parrado and Antonio \"Tintin\" Vizintn, one of their fellow teammates, eventually found the tail end of the plane. In it, they said they found suitcases with some warm clothing, a small amount of food and batteries.
\"They were like, well, we could connect that to the radio and make the radio work and call for help,\" Pea said. \"It was like, if we can make the radio work and call for help, let's do that instead of risking our lives.\"
Once this was decided, the survivors ensured that Parrado, Canessa and Vizintn, who they named \"the expeditionaries,\" ate a larger portion of the food supplies to build up their strength, according to an interview that the survivors told John Guiver, the author of \"To Play the Game,\" which chronicled their story.
Bolstered by several layers of clothing, and travel gear, including a sleeping bag that was patched together from materials of the plane wreckage, the men set out to be saved on Dec. 12: day 61 of their ordeal.
Parrado suggested to Canessa and Vizintin that because the trek was longer than they expected, Vizintin should go down to update the others, and leaving Parrado and Canessa with Vizintin's food ration.
Parrado and Canessa's trek down the mountain proved even more treacherous, and Parrado said his shoes began to break. By the eighth day of their journey, the men approached a river bank and found signs of life: including cattle, a cattle track and a rusty soup can.
The trail led them to a pivotal moment in their journey. Cannesa recalled seeing a man riding a horse down the slope of a small mountain. He immediately alerted Parrado who quickly began running down the slope towards the man.
Parrado caught the attention of this man on a horse, Sergio Catalan, but because of the loud roar of the river between them, Canessa said they couldn't hear each other. However, he said he heard Catalan say the word \"maana,\" Spanish for tomorrow, indicating when he would return.
Parrado wrote down a message that would ultimately change his fate and the fate of his fellow survivors: \"I come from a plane that crashed in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for 10 days. I have 14 friends wounded on the crash site. We need help. We don't have any food. Please come and get us.\"
Alipio Vera, who was a reporter for Televisin Nacional de Chile (TVN) and on the scene, told ABC News, \"they were very weak, their voices were barely audible...it was incredible, to see people that were rugby players, who were pretty strong, now they were almost skeletons.\"
\"I took their blood pressure, respiration, pulse and everything,\" said Wilma Koch, the nurse who attended Parrado and Canessa upon their rescue, told ABC News. \"At that moment, well, Roberto looked very faint, but with a lot of spirit. But Nando looked better.\"
The 14 survivors at the fuselage were taken to safety with two trips over two days. Referring to the helicopters, survivor Carlos Pez Rodrguez recalled: \"I saw them as two gigantic birds, bearers of freedom. I cannot explain that moment's happiness.\"
Quickly the sensational headlines faded and many public figures, including the Pope, expressed sympathy for their struggles. Their story would be the subject of several books, including ones written by Parrado, Canessa, Strauch and Pez, and was adapted into the 1993 film \"Alive.\"
Admission is free on Friday, July 6 for spectactors, and the evening bareback puissance has been replaced by a polo exhibition in the main arena. Top event riders will play in an arena polo match against members of the Great Meadow Polo Club in what is sure to be a thrilling evening of sport.
With that in mind, Great Meadow asked me to take a polo lesson to help spread the word about the Friday night polo exhibition. A quick evaluation of my sporting skillsets reveals me as woefully ill-suited to playing polo. Prowess at playing baseball, pool, lacrosse or really any activity involving hand-eye coordination would have benefited me greatly.
Thankfully, the instructors at the Great Meadow Polo School are well versed in teaching polo players of all experience levels and abilities. The school was established by John Gobin and Whitney Ross alongside the Great Meadow Polo Club to build future generations of players in the Northern Virginia area.
Whitney Ross, assistant manager for the polo school, took me under her wing for my lesson. Rebekah Pizana of the Greenhill Winery & Vineyards Polo Team kindly offered to let us use her polo ponies, Pistol and Bodie. Both are pint-sized Argentinian-bred geldings who generously tolerated my lack of hand-eye coordination during the lesson.
Once I had the correct contact (or lack thereof), we moved on to hitting the ball. Like with contact, success with hitting the ball required me to totally override my instincts as to how event riders are supposed to sit in the saddle and maintain our upper body position.
You can take a polo lesson, too! The Great Meadow Polo School provides top notch instruction from international professional polo players and has taught countless riders to play in the Northern Virginia area and beyond. Click here to learn more and sign up for a lesson.
Every Saturday from May through September, Twilight Polo features three matches with halftime games for both children and adults. Following the final match, the evenings conclude with music and dancing in the pavilion. You can bring a picnic to enjoy on the grass hill overlooking the arena, or book reserved seating.
A rotating list of local food trucks are always on site for Twilight Polo. Glasses and bottles of wine from Greenhill Winery and Vineyards, sponsor of the 25th Silver Anniversary year, are available for purchase at the wine bar. Old Bust Head Brewery also sells pints of craft beer. Click here to view the Twilight Polo schedule.
Updated February 13, 2024: Hi, I have locked this thread so my most recent replies don't get lost among other posts from people, but YES I am still supporting this project! If you have a question for me, contact me directly.
Out-dated, previous MvF cheat tables I created include the following patches... If you're a donor and you need any of these for testing purposes or anything, contact me privately and let me know what you're looking for. The same rule applies with these as with the main updated script: the amount you've chosen to donate directly affects the speed you will be served by my automated tracker. For more info on how that works, scroll back up a little bit and click on the "How to get MvF" link where it gives a longer explanation of the process.
TENTH UPDATE - Improved and minimized multiple MvF scripts into 1 checkbox instead of 3. Also re-wrote how the cheat table works so it will be much faster to update when 2K releases future patches.
EIGHTH UPDATE - DQ can be left on now, and an improved Payback saver was implemented so changing Paybacks @ character select can be saved/remembered
SIXTH UPDATE - Men weren't being aggressive toward women and breaking pins up in multi person matches. Newest update aims to fix that in all matches!
FIFTH UPDATE - Improved likelihood of getting the correct MvF selection screen in Rumble set up
FOURTH UPDATE - Fixed problem where women wouldn't hit men
THIRD UPDATE - Improved M+F in more areas, and added selection box to choose M or F championship to challenge for