France mourn dead athletes
Employees install a giant poster to pay tribute to late French Olympic swimmer Camille Muffat (R) near another with the list of names of victims of a fatal helicopter crash at the at the town hall in Nice, March 10, 2015. Three French sports stars - Olympic swimmer Camille Muffat, yachtswoman Florence Arthaud and boxer Alexis Vastine - were among 10 people killed when two helicopters collided in Argentina on Monday during the filming of a reality TV show. Authorities said it was still unclear what caused the accident in the rugged western province of La Rioja, near the Andes Mountains. REUTERS/Jean-Pierre Amet

Ten people were killed in a helicopter crash on Monday in La Rioja, Argentina, including eight French citizens and two Argentine pilots. Three of the French victims of the crash were revered sports stars. They were traveling along with crew members to participate in a reality TV show called “Dropped,” whose premise is to place the athletes in remote locations and document their return to civilization.

The helicopters crashed after they allegedly collided in mid-air. Argentina’s La Nacion reports that the two pilots were veterans of the national air force, and that they were flying fairly new airplanes. One of the helicopters was on loan from the provincial government, whose governor assured local media that the equipment was safe even in the thin air of the high-altitude Patagonia mountains.

“[The loaned helicopter] was one of the best in the world for high-altitude [flight],” said Luis Beder Herrera, governor of La Rioja, quoted another article by La Nacion. The provence hired “a pilot with years of experience in alpine flying,” he said.

In France, officials in government and sport circles mourned the death of the three athletes: Olympic swimmer Camille Muffat, Olympic boxer Alexis Vastine, and yachtswoman Florence Arthaud. Former Arsenal soccer player and “Dropped” co-star Sylvain Wiltord tweeted “I am sad for my friends, I’m shaking, I’m horrified, I can’t find the words, I don’t want to say anything.” French President Francois Hollande also issued a statement, on Tuesday.

"The sudden death of our fellow French nationals is a cause of immense sadness," he said.

The Patagonia mountain range is no stranger to areal accidents. In 1972 members of an Uruguayan rugby team survived an airplane members that killed team members, family members, and two pilots. Survivors eventually hiked out of the crash site after resorting to cannibalism of the crash’s victims, surviving the Patagonian snow to tell the story in the book Alive, which was later adapted to a fictional film.

Tragically, it may have been this survival story that inspired filmmakers to bring the French athletes only a few hundreds of miles north to be “dropped” into the alpine wilderness.

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