The man who brought down Bolt
World champion is bowled over after 200m victory as cameraman slips on his Segway
Usain Bolt surged to a thrilling win over Justin Gatlin in the 200m at the Beijing World Championships yesterday, but met a far tougher foe on his victory lap in the form of a cameramen who lost control of his Segway scooter, with disastrous results
MOMENTS after clinching 200m gold in Beijing, having evaded his closest rival by nearly two tenths of a second yesterday, Usain Bolt swaggered carefree along the track.
But his moment of triumph was shattered when he was knocked over by a Chinese cameraman who lost control of his Segway, a two-wheeled self-propelled scooter, and crashed into him.
The pair were unceremoniously flung to the ground when the cameraman’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.
Bolt has swept the individual sprints at this year’s athletics World Championships for the fifth time, winning a record fourth straight 200m title in 19.55 seconds. The 100m and 200m champion had earlier jokingly chided the BBC commentator Michael Johnson for not backing him to win the title.
“Michael Johnson, stop doubting me bro,” he said, to which Johnson answered: “I’m the one trying to tell Denise [Lewis]! C’mon Usain Leo Bolt. I’m in your corner, bro.” Johnson, the American former world and Olympic sprint champion, had previously cast doubt on Bolt’s chances in the 200m.
Bolt will round off his time in Beijing on Saturday when he is expected to compete in the sprint relay.
He said that he remains confident of his chances ahead of Saturday’s race. “It’s alright, I will get over it. Never a doubt [for the sprint relay race], never a doubt. I am just going to get it massaged, ice it up a bit and I should be fine,” he said.
“I wasn’t looking, I was waving to the crowd, and then I felt something take me out. It’s OK. I am happy my body came out unscathed.
“I have a few cuts. But it’s nothing I have never done to myself in training. It wasn’t as bad.”
The red-faced cameraman, who is thought to have worked for Chinese state broadcaster CCTV – a network with more than one billion viewers – has yet to comment on the accident. He was later seen shaking hands with Bolt.
The cameraman is not the first person to have suffered a high profile Segway malfunction.
George W Bush famously crashed his machine while riding around his family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine in 2013.
The Segway uses gyroscopes to remain upright and is controlled by the direction in which the rider leans. The device’s safety manual warns users of the Segway to wear a helmet, protective clothes and to have “a friend act as your spotter”.
Sport: Page 18-19