{"id":111982,"date":"2021-08-05T09:14:44","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T09:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=111982"},"modified":"2021-08-05T09:58:24","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T09:58:24","slug":"british-swimmer-cops-brutal-eye-injury-in-tokyo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=111982","title":{"rendered":"British swimmer cops brutal eye injury in Tokyo"},"content":{"rendered":"

British marathon swimmer Hector Pardoe thought his eye had fallen out into Tokyo Bay after he was hit in the face by a rival's elbow late in the race at the Tokyo Olympics.<\/a><\/p>\n

Going into the final lap of the 10km open water course in hot conditions that made racing hard enough, Pardoe was whacked in a blow that broke his goggles and forced him to retire.<\/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

The 20-year-old described his panic as he attempted to find out how bad his injury was.<\/p>\n

"On my last lap, I took an elbow to the face – I thought I'd lost my eye," Pardoe told BBC One after the race.<\/p>\n

"My goggles came off completely. I always hoped that if I got injured like that, I'd be able to finish the race – but my goggles fell off and I couldn't even get them.<\/p>\n

"I couldn't see anything, I thought my eye had fallen out in the water. I went up to the lifeguards and said, 'My eye, my eye! Is it okay?' They weren't giving me a very decisive opinion and I had to get out after that.<\/p>\n

"It's fine, they're just going to stitch it up for me back at the Olympic Village. It was bleeding everywhere."<\/p>\n

\"Great<\/p>\n

Even with the race starting at 6.30am local time, the temperature was already 27 Celsius with 80 per cent humidity, making it feel like close to 33 degrees.<\/p>\n

Unlike the women's race the previous day, there were no clouds to mitigate the heat.<\/p>\n

The stifling conditions got to David Aubry of France, who dropped out with about three kilometres remaining and was carried off the deck on a stretcher.<\/p>\n

French officials said a shoulder injury hampered his training leading up to the race, so his fitness wasn't good enough to handle the heat.<\/p>\n

Pardoe also found the going tough.<\/p>\n

"I've never raced in such hot waters. I started to panic when I was behind, I could see that any chance of top five, top six was over," he said.<\/p>\n

Germany's Florian Wellbrock won the race, having also claimed bronze in the 1500m in the pool earlier in the Games.<\/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":"

British marathon swimmer Hector Pardoe thought his eye had fallen out into Tokyo Bay after he was hit in the face by a rival's elbow […]<\/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\/111982"}],"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=111982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111984,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111982\/revisions\/111984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}