{"id":111548,"date":"2021-08-04T14:22:17","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T14:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=111548"},"modified":"2021-08-04T14:58:46","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T14:58:46","slug":"horror-accident-sends-veteran-crashing-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=111548","title":{"rendered":"Horror accident sends veteran crashing out"},"content":{"rendered":"

A freak injury has knocked Belgian veteran Thomas van der Plaetsen out of the men's decathlon on the opening day of the event at the Tokyo Games.<\/a><\/p>\n

Van der Plaetsen appeared to slip on his first attempt during the long jump portion of the event as he took off from the board.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old was then flung five metres through the air before face-planting in the sand, lying motionless for some time.<\/p>\n

OLYMPICS BLOG: UPDATES, LATEST NEWS<\/strong><\/em><\/a> |<\/strong><\/em> TOKYO GAMES EVENT CENTRE: SCHEDULE, RESULTS, MEDAL TALLY<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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The Belgian managed to pull himself from the sand, as he was tended to by medics and eventually helped into a wheelchair.<\/p>\n

Van der Plaetsen sat 17th after the first leg of the event, having finished the 100m heats in a time of 11.05 seconds.<\/p>\n

Van Der Plaetsen has had an interesting career, including an incident in 2014 where he initially failed a drug test for heightened HCG levels before it was revealed that had been caused by up to then undiagnosed testicular cancer – he was then treated and made a full recovery.<\/p>\n

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On the same day of competition, the world champions of the decathlon and heptathlon also crashed out of Olympic medal contention after breaking down during their last races of the day.<\/p>\n

Heptathlon world champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson of Great Britain injured her right calf muscle as she rounded the bend in the 200m, the fourth event of the competition.<\/p>\n

About an hour later, decathlon world champion Niklas Kaul of Germany appeared to injure an ankle during the 400m race, the fifth of 10 disciplines, and did not finish.<\/p>\n

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Damian Warner of Canada leads at the halfway point of the decathlon with 4722 points, 81 ahead of Australia's Ash Moloney.<\/p>\n

Johnson-Thompson slowed to a stop at the top of the straight and sat on the track before waving away medical attendants who went to her assistance \u2014 including one pushing a wheelchair.<\/p>\n

She got up and limped across the finish line but was disqualified for stepping out of her lane.<\/p>\n

Her preparation was hampered by a series of injuries, including her left Achilles tendon.<\/p>\n

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Johnson-Thompson had been in fifth place after the 100m hurdles, high jump and long jump.<\/p>\n

With three events to go, 2017 world championship bronze medalist Anouk Vetter of the Netherlands leads with 3968 points.<\/p>\n

She is 27 points clear of Noor Vidts of Belgium and 47 ahead of defending Olympic champion Nafissatou Thiam.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Additional reporting by the Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/em><\/strong> clicking here!<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A freak injury has knocked Belgian veteran Thomas van der Plaetsen out of the men's decathlon on the opening day of the event at the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111548"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111550,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111548\/revisions\/111550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}