TOKYO — Steeplechaser Tim Van de Velde regarded behind him and noticed a fellow competitor gingerly crawling over the ultimate barrier on a 3,000-meter journey that went terribly mistaken for each.
The Belgian’s hopes for a high end already lengthy crushed, he rotated, put an arm round a stumbling Carlos San Martin and helped him limp in to the end.
That present of sportsmanship Saturday between the Tenth- and Eleventh-place finishers in an in any other case routine qualifying race may need been the spotlight of a busy opening night time at monitor and subject world championships, even on a day when 5 gold medals had been handed out.
“I noticed him stumbling and thought, ‘Why not?'” Van de Velde mentioned. “We each had dangerous luck, I suppose. Perhaps we will share some dangerous luck collectively.”
Van de Velde was racing in entrance because the runners approached the water pit to start out the third of a 7½-lap race that asks the runners to vault 5 3-foot-high obstacles positioned across the monitor, considered one of which fronts the 2-foot-deep water impediment.
He clipped the barrier and fell in, and by the point he bought up, his hopes had been crushed. He raced the remainder of the best way simply to say he completed.
Van de Velde is not any stranger to those kind of slipups. The 25-year-old, a gold medalist on the 2016 European Youth Championships, broke his collarbone after a fall at European Championships final 12 months. At worlds in Eugene, Oregon, in 2022, he fell into the water and injured his ankle.
“I do know what it is prefer to really feel helpless on the monitor,” he mentioned.
As does San Martin. The Colombian was helped off the monitor in a wheelchair and did not come by way of the interview space.
Van de Velde mentioned it can take time to recover from this newest disappointment. The excellent news is there’s an excellent probability he will likely be remembered for one thing aside from the place he completed.
“We’re each opponents. We each work very laborious,” Van de Velde mentioned. “In fact, the principle aim was the ultimate and we each had dangerous luck, in order that’s why I did it.”