Imagine you are participating in one of the most important races of your life and on the track, in front of you, stands a dazed cameraman who did not even see that he was disturbing dozens of athletes. .. This is exactly what happened on the evening of Monday July 18 near Eugene (Oregon) in the United States, where the World Athletics Championships are taking place at the moment. The opportunity for the stars to show what they have in the belly, like Marcell Jacobs, a year after his remarkable Olympic Games on the side of Tokyo.
Among the most anticipated races last night, the men’s 3,000m steeplechase final figured prominently. A test of extreme difficulty where runners must pass over hurdles before landing in a pool of water and which requires extreme concentration. Last night on the track at Hayward Field, the riders had a very funny surprise when they arrived on the straight because they found a cameraman in front of themplanted in the middle of the track, focused on taking pictures of the competition.
We were lucky that there was no fall, we managed to avoid it
With his back to the athletes, the man in question didn’t even realize he was in the way the runners who were forced to dodge it when they reached it. Despite the screams of the crowd who tried to warn the cameraman that he was disturbing the athletes, nothing helped and several of them passed within inches of him. A story that has been talked about a lot on social networks, but of which the Frenchman Soufiane El-Bakkali, thirteenth in the race, did not make a big deal. “Luckily, the cameraman didn’t move, he must have understood that we were coming and the best thing to do at such times is not to move. It’s a fact of racing as there can be. We were lucky that there was no crash, we managed to avoid it”he explains in remarks reported by Le Parisien.