A US Nordic combined athlete faced an extraordinary hurdle during Thursday’s Olympic team sprint when he was struck by a leaf blower mid-launch from the ski jump start bar.
The bizarre incident occurred after an official failed to remove the equipment in time.
Leaf blowers are routinely deployed during ski jumping competitions to clear loose snow from the in-run, with officials positioned along the track to operate them between jumps.
The machine made contact with Ben Loomis on the shoulder, scuffing his uniform but causing no pain.
The unusual collision did not appear to faze Loomis, who, alongside teammate Niklas Malacinski, went on to secure a seventh-place finish, taking the mishap in his stride.
“Unfortunately one of them was a little bit too late pulling theirs (leafblower) out of the way, but they’re human and things can happen,” Loomis told Reuters.
Despite being offered a chance to redo his jump, Loomis declined, citing worsening snow conditions that could have slowed his in-run.
“I was still pretty happy with the jump and had the opportunity to take a second jump, but decided that conditions were probably getting worse and it kind of mentally was my competition jump, so I was happy with it,” he explained.
It is not the first time that this year’s Games have been disrupted in unusual fashion.
On Wednesday, a dog gatecrashed the women’s team sprint cross country, much to the amusement of specatators.
The furry friend, speculated to be a husky but was actually a Czechoslovakian wolfdog, wandered onto the stadium course during the race to a howling reaction from the crowd.
At the final straight, the canine found his way onto the snow and was briefly distracted by the trackside camera before trying to catch up the two competitors striving for the line.
It then raced across the line behind Croatia’s Tena Hadzic and Argentinian Nahiara Diaz Gonzalez to rapturous cheers, greeting the exhausted skiers by sniffing out his competition.
