The first victim of the deadly New Year’s Eve fire that tore through a bar at an Alpine ski resort has been named as a 17-year-old Italian golf prodigy who was pictured with Rory McIlroy.
Emmanuele Galeppini’s death was confirmed in an Instagram post by the Italian Golf Federation, which remembered the teen as a ‘young athlete who embodied passion and authentic values’.
‘In this time of great sorrow, our thoughts go out to his family and all those who loved him’, the tribute added.
Galeppini had been out partying at the ‘Constellation’ bar in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, when a deadly inferno broke out around an hour after midnight on New Years Eve, leaving over 40 people dead and another 115 injured.
The teenager, from Genova, was among the 13 missing Italians on a list released by the country’s Foreign Ministry yesterday.
His father had gone out to ‘Constellation’ bar looking for him following reports of the fire, as his family launched an appeal to find find him.
Galeppini’s friends and family members suspected he had been out at the bar because they hadn’t heard from him since midnight, when his father reportedly spoke to him on the phone to wish him a happy birthday, according to reports.
The Italian teenager, who was based in Dubai, was a member of the Italian national team and his best rank was 2440th, and was well known in the UAE junior and amateur golfing scene, according to GolfDigestme.com.
He was widely regarded as a promising young talent, competing regularly across the Middle East and Europe.
One of his most recent triumphs came at the 2025 Omega Dubai Creek Amateur Open last April.
As tributes poured in for Galeppini, desperate families were showing mobile phone photos of their young relatives in the resort of Crans-Montana to try and discover their fate in the basement bar fire.
Swiss investigators are now probing what caused the fire at the Alpine ski resort bar.
Most injuries, many of them serious, occurred when the blaze swept through the crowded bar less that two hours after midnight on Thursday.
