Who Knew Track and Field Was So Dangerous?

by DCScrap, Our Book of Scrap

Track and field is suddenly becoming a much more dangerous sport than I ever thought possible. First, we had a guy getting impaled by a javelin earlier this summer, now comes news of a car-wreck-style pileup at the World Championships yesterday during the Steeplechase event.

Austrian steeplechaser Guenther Weidlinger was rushed to hospital with facial injuries after a horror fall at the world championships on Sunday.

Weidlinger stumbled and smashed into a hurdle face-first, splitting his lip and cutting his jaw during the heats for the 3,000 meters steeplechase in Osaka.

Who would have thought that a running event could produce quotes such as this ...

"Although he was unconscious for about 30 minutes, he now has full control of his arms (and) hands and can speak clearly," the Osaka organizing committee said in a statement.

Check out the carnage in the photo below. Maybe they need to make those steeplechase barriers out of Styrofoam or something.

Is this why track and field is so popular everywhere but in the U.S.? Maybe it's the same reason soccer is so big everywhere else. People love to see crashes and chaos. For some reason we just don't have the same results when we host soccer and track events here in the States, so we just have to settle for NASCAR.

Source: Reuters