This morning we walked to the weightlifting venue for the men's 77kg weight class trials in the snatch, and the clean and jerk (they take the weights lifted for each and add them together for their final score). The athletes get to decide what weight they will start off with, and then have three attempts. If they are successful in the first lift, they increase the weight (they can do this two times) ... if they are uneuccessful, they have two more chances to make it. Below is a guy from New Zealand who placed in the middle of the pack.
There was one American who competed (Chad Vaughn, below). He was successful in the snatch, but set his starting weight too high for the clean and jerk and was not able to lift it on three attempts. He was one of only two athletes to not have a score ... the second lifter, a guy from hungary, had his left arm give out on him as he was lifting the bar over his head for the jerk (to me it looked like he dislocated his shoulder, but others in our group said that they saw blood indicating a broken arm) and then had the bar fall on him as he was trying to get out of the way. Needless to say, he was in some pain and was laid out on the ground for a while before being taken away on a stretcher. I have not been able to determine his status, but hope that he will be OK.
2 comments:
Oh, my!!! They train so hard before going to the Olympics just to have things like that happen - did he not warm up sufficiently before he started? Or did he just not use common sense about the weight that he was lifting? And how did it affect you watching it? Hope your day wasn't spoiled.
It was actually one of the most talked about moments of the Olympics so far. It was just an accident, and one of the risks associated with the event.
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