With 329 gold medals up for grabs in 32 sports, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games will offer fans plenty of spectacular moments, but they’ll also be filled with some ridiculous ones.
In the women’s sailing skiff competition in Marseille, France, on March 3 (KST), the Dutch made a ridiculous mistake.
The Dutch duo of Odile van Anholt and Annette Dutz abandoned the final medal race after misreading the course and failing to cross the finish line.
According to the Associated Press, “Van Aanholt and Dutz thought they had already crossed the finish line, so they stopped the race and watched the other athletes finish.”
“We thought we had definitely crossed the finish line, but when we didn’t see any signals, we assumed something was wrong (with the signal),” Van Anholt said in a post-race interview.
The trailing Swedish and Italian crews overtook the Dutch crew to finish first and second, while the Dutch, who had started late, came in third.
Luckily for Van Anholt and Dutz, they didn’t miss out on the gold medal, as the event awards gold to the team with the best combined score from the previous 12 races and the medal race.
Had they finished fourth in the medal race, they would have lost the gold to the Swedish pair.
On June 6 at the Palace of Versailles, world No. 1 Henrik Eckermann (SWE) had a terrifying fall from his horse during the individual show jumping competition.
In the video, Eckermann’s horse, King Edward, clears one of the obstacles and then drops Eckermann in front of the event’s mascot, Frieza, before proceeding in the opposite direction.
Eckerman, a gold medalist at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, was disqualified, but fortunately was able to get up and leave the arena without serious injury.
“It’s unbelievable what happened,” said Eurosport commentator Richard Vaughan, explaining that “yesterday he looked a little bit out of shape, but today he had a big double, he went through the puddles well and then all of a sudden it happened.”
Adil Osmanov (Moldova), who competed in the men’s 73kg judo, suffered an injury after overdoing his post-fight ceremony in his bronze medal bout.
He was in a kneeling position, swinging his right arm into a hard fist, when he started to feel excruciating pain in his shoulder.
“My shoulder was already in bad shape before the Games and I was advised to have surgery,” Osmanov said, so it’s a good thing he was able to finish the race.
The “tribulation period” for referees continued.
On July 25, a rugby match between Uruguay and Kenya resulted in a tackle on a Kenyan player by Uruguay’s Mateo Viñas, who grabbed the referee’s leg.
In the men’s soccer semifinal between Spain and Morocco on July 4, Spain defender Marc Pouville clashed with Uzbek referee Ilzhiz Tantashev in the 15th minute of the first half, leading to the substitution of standby referee Glenn Nyberg (Sweden).
In Tahiti, where the surfing competition was held, there was a referee “removal from duty” incident.
The controversy began when photos of Australian referee Benjamin Law hanging out with the Australian coaching staff and athletes during the Games surfaced on social media.
“Due to his inappropriate behavior as a referee, Law has been suspended from officiating assignments for the remainder of the Games,” the International Surfing Association announced. 바카라사이트