Even World Class Marathons Sometimes Get It Wrong

By now you would've known about the finish line incident involving the winner of this year's Chicago Marathon, Robert Cheruiyot. Just before he hit the tape, he slipped, fell and whacked his head hard on the tarmac. After watching the CBS video here: http://cbs2chicago.com/video/?id=27042@wbbm.dayport.com, 2 things struck me. Firstly was how unprofessional the medics were - they were telling him to get up and looked to be wanting to get him out of the way even though he had head trauma. A check on the Internet brought me to this site. I fully agree with one of the comments, which I reproduced below:

"He definitely is getting a lesson, oh yeah. The 'paramedics' are going to be getting wonderfully painful lessons taught to them, also for their completely shoddy and wholey unprofessional way they (for a head trauma issue) PULLED him to his feet, looked more at the video cameras than him and his condition... Which REQUIRES the use of a stretcher for a concussive class injury as hea has had. Keep the peron on their back, cradle their head while guiding the body into place on the stretcher and using 5 other people (which they certainly had!) and then lift him safely, stresslessly away from the flow of runners (whom i'm sure are capapble of going Around things...) too REAL medical assessment... These people are going to cost their employers a lot of money... They were more concerned about the getting him out of sight of the cameras... They seemed Camera Shy for fucksake, who's the idiot who hired camera shy medics for an internation sports event... Riduculous!!!"

The other thing is that the organizers put a semi-transparent advertising plastic sheet just before the timing mat and since it rained (Chicago is usually wet during these period), the strip was wet and contributed to Cheruiyot's fall. If I were Cheruiyot, I'd sue the socks off the bungling organizers.





More coverage of the news here (ESPN) and here (IAAF). You can clearly see the plastic strip culprit in the IAAF site.