Graham Hill

British race car driver and two-time Formula 1 world champion (1962 and 1968). He also won the Indianapolis 500 in his rookie year (1966), a feat not repeated until the 2000 Indy 500, which was won by Juan Pablo Montoya in his first race ever in an Indy car. Graham is the father of Damon Hill, also a former F1 champ. He died in 1975, in a plane crash.

Hill was the protagonist of what was maybe the most painful, protracted, humiliating, slow decadence a sports champion can experience. After a crash at the 1969 USA Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in which he had both legs broken, his speed was suddenly gone. He postponed retirement for an additional five years, limping around in a rented Lotus, then a Brabham, then a Shadow, then a Lola. He finally decided to quit at the age of 46 in the 1975 Monaco Grand Prix. He failed to qualify for the race.

By then he was starting to build his own F1 racing team, and it was actually looking promising. A young Englishman by the name of Tony Brise was the driver. The plane crash that killed Hill also killed Brise and a number of technical staff of the Hill team, cutting short the team's existence.