Moments after clinching 200m gold in Beijing, having evaded his closest rival by nearly two tenths of a second, Usain Bolt swaggered carefree along the track.
But his momentary triumphalism, a Jamaican flag draped across his shoulders, was shattered when he failed to outrun a Chinese cameraman riding a Segway, the ubiquitous two wheeled self-propelled scooter, which then crashed into him.
The pair were unceremoniously flung to the ground when the videographer’s contraption clipped a railing, throwing the portly rider off his balance and straight into the world’s most expensive pair of legs.
Bolt performed a nimble backward roll before jumping to his feet, visibly shaken by the episode.
In characteristically self-effacing fashion, the fastest man in the world blamed his arch-rival Justin Gatlin for the crash.
“The rumour I’m trying to start right now is that Justin Gatlin paid him off,” he said.
Silver medallist Gatlin, sitting beside Bolt, parried: “I want my money back. He didn’t complete the job.”
Bolt later insisted that the incident, which witnesses claim could have been far more serious, had not left him with any lasting injuries after he was seen holding his left leg.
“It didn’t actually hit me in my Achilles, it hit me in my calf area,” he said.
“He tried to kill me – I don’t know what he was going on? It was like: ‘You are winning too much – take him out!’”
Source: Telegraph UK | Oliver Brown
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