A French gymnast, 26 year old Samir Ait Said broke his leg and the sound
of the leg snapping was audible from down on the floor to up in the
rafters.
The next sound was a collective gasp from the crowd, then a groan, then
silence.
Said collapsed after he landed and broke his leg during a vault training
on Saturday, his left tibia broke on impact and his leg twisted
grotesquely away from his thigh.
After he landed, he grabbed his leg and covered his face with his right
hand while trainers surrounded him for several minutes.
A wheelchair was rolled out to the side of the mat where he lay but he
couldn’t use any of those items, he was strapped to a stretcher and
carried off as sympathetic fans cheered.
French coach Denis Charlieux said that Said had been taken to the
hospital and that they were waiting for further information from
doctors. He called the day “a nightmare.”
He said:
“It’s so hard to deal with something like that,” he said through a translator. “He would be in the final if it didn’t happen.”
Later in the evening, the official feed of the French gymnastics
federation tweeted that Said had a double tibia fracture and wanted to
return for 2020.
