Translated material
The spear is mine
Of course, it is impossible to completely avoid injuries, and sometimes extremely dangerous ones, in professional sports. This activity in itself is too dangerous. But there are cases when compliance with basic safety standards guarantees the preservation of the life and health of athletes, and non-compliance, on the contrary, is fraught with big troubles and even tragedies. All the more scandalous is the incident that happened at the end of last week at the third stage of the main commercial competition of modern athletics - the “Golden League” - in Rome.
This city hosted both the world athletics championships and the Summer Olympics. And this was not the first time that the Golden League stage took place here. Therefore, the organizers of such competitions in the Eternal City have enough experience to avoid making childish mistakes when holding top-ranking tournaments. Nevertheless, such a mistake, which almost turned out to be fatal, was made.
A javelin with a shifted center of gravity appeared after the German javelin thrower Uwe Hohn threw a projectile 104 m 80 cm in 1984, breaking the world record by almost 10 m. Then the tournament organizers reasonably considered that if a javelin is capable of flying such gigantic distances, there is a threat to the safety of spectators sitting close to the places where the projectile lands. But the new spear, which does not fly so far due to its shifted center of gravity, lurks other threats. It has a much less predictable trajectory, and if the projectile leaves the athlete's hand, it can fly in an unexpected direction. This is exactly the throw that one of the strongest javelin throwers in the world, Finn Tero Pitkämäki, accidentally got in Rome. The javelin seemed to be flying far and inside the trajectory of the sector, but then it sharply fell to the side and hit... the French long jumper Salim Sderi in the side. Fortunately for Salim, his injury was not very serious. Although the athlete was taken away by an ambulance, which urgently arrived directly at the stadium.
This is a truly wild case: the organizers did not isolate the javelin throwers’ sector from the long jump sector with a net. Moreover, at the moment when the spear pierced his side, Sderi was sitting on a bench with his back to the projectile, calmly waiting for his turn to make the next attempt. That is, he was in the place of maximum concentration of jumpers during the competition. In turn, the jumping sector was located in close proximity to the treadmill, where at that moment the women were running 5 kilometers.
Competitions with other, much heavier than a spear, and no less dangerous projectiles - a disk, a cannonball and a hammer, fortunately, are now always carried out in sectors covered with a special protective mesh. Moreover, they try to ensure that representatives of jumping or running disciplines do not compete at the time of these starts. Now, it seems, the organizers of athletics tournaments will have to think about more clearly protecting other athletes from javelin throwers.
Big sport, alas, is not without tragedies. There are situations when a tragic accident really cannot be foreseen and prevented. This was the case, for example, when at the Universiade in the early 80s of the last century, Soviet diver Sergei Shalibashvili died right during a ski jump, hitting his head on the springboard due to an error in dismounting from it. Or when, right at the World Championships, they accidentally stabbed to death (having hit the only point on the body not protected by ammunition) the great foil fighter Vladimir Smirnov. As a result of an unavoidable accident, Czech hockey player Ludek Chaika, who was hit in the head by a puck, and CSKA football goalkeeper Sergei Perkhun, who collided with the opposing team’s forward Budun Budunov in a purely game episode, died. But it is all the more important to completely eliminate the possibility of a tragic outcome where this can be done.
Therefore, I would like to hope that the International Athletics Federation will respond to the Roman javelin incident as quickly and radically as it did after the famous throw by Uwe Hohn. Spectators want spectacle, athletes want to set records. But the health of both is more valuable.