The Remembering of Lazar Ðukić to Come
Lazar Ðukić’s in-competition death surfaces memories of the death of another personal hero, Kurt Caselli.
The passing of Lazar Ðukić at the 2024 CrossFit Games has had me thinking of the passing of Kurt Caselli at the 2013 Baja 1000. They were both in the prime of their life. They were both at the top of their respective sports. They were both recently engaged. They were both torchbearers for the niche community they competed in and loved. I think most importantly though, Caselli and Ðukić were brothers and sons to a family that loved them.
To say I had a man crush on Kurt Caselli is an understatement. I interviewed him for Seat Time, an offroad podcast I recorded at the time, where he always made me feel like a best friend. I even had the pleasure of meeting him in person at X-Games and the ISDE in Germany. Again, always down for chit chat and selfies.
What I saw shared over the weekend about Lazar made me feel he held the same values as Kurt. “Energy” and “lit up a room” were two phrases I read a lot in the posts shared about athletes' different experiences with Lazar. I’m not “in” the CrossFit community as I was in the dirt bike community at the time of Kurt’s passing, so I never interviewed Lazar or met him in person. But what I read over the weekend magnified my already high opinion of the Serbian athlete.
I see a lot of the same posts, videos, and comments from 2013 that I see now in 2024. Some people are grieving, some people are yelling, some people are pointing fingers, and some people are in shock. What I remember from 2013 is that the feelings, the posts, and the actions taken by others will ebb and flow for a while. Everyone needs space to grieve, but being an asshole doesn’t help anyone.
One thing I haven’t seen while reading about Lazar is “he died doing what he loved”. Unfortunately, I heard and read that statement a lot with the passing of Kurt. Though I love racing dirt bikes, I would never wish to prove my love of it by dying doing it. I believe this statement is a coping mechanism for the ones that say it. It’s a way they justify to themselves what they have witnessed and experienced. When I die, I want to be surrounded by the people I love, because they’re what matter most in my life. My guess is that Kurt and Lazar would have wished for the same thing, but that’s not how their lives ended. Don’t cheapen their death to make yourself feel better in the moment.
Right now we’re only a few days past the tragic death of Lazar Ðukić. For some, grief hasn’t even truly set in. For others, they’ve been feeling his loss since the news broke. There’s no one way, or right way, to process the loss of someone that meant something to you. The identity of those emotions, and the validation that they exist, is an important step toward healing.
Now that we're years past the passing of Kurt Caselli, it still isn’t easy to think about. The Baja 1000 still goes on. Tributes were made, and silence was held, but competitors want to compete, so events are held for them to do that. The Kurt Caselli Foundation was created to focus on the safety of riders and racers in the off-road motorcycling industry.
I hope to see something similar happen for Lazar Ðukić. I hope his family, or the PFFA, find a way for Lazar’s memory to live on in a way that celebrates a sport he loved, while also focusing on athlete safety; an aspect of sport that can always be more thorough.
In 11 years, just like with Kurt Caselli, Lazar Ðukić will still be missed, but he will also be remembered. I don’t think of Kurt Caselli these days for the championships he won. I think of Kurt Caselli for the amazing human he was to me, and to everyone else he came in contact with. That’s what we will remember about Lazar Ðukić as well. We’ll still be discussing his smile, his energy, as well as his amazing athletic feats. His family will still miss him when they gather for fellowship, because what should still be here, isn’t.
It’s not the passage of time that will help everyone heal, but the processing of the feelings, and the celebration of life. Never stop celebrating the humble human that Lazar Ðukić showed the world we all have the capacity to be.
