5 – Weightlift Drop
- A weightlifter that won gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympic games did not have as much luck the second time in London.
- Matthias Steiner of Germany was attempting to lift 432 pounds (almost 200 kilos) above his head when his body suddenly gave way and buckled, nearly crushing him to death with the extreme weight of the steel bar. He was taken away for X-Rays on his neck, but escaped mostly unscathed.
- Unsurprisingly, he did not win a medal that year.
4 – Gymnast Drop
- It only takes a split second to end a life-time worth of hard work, and unfortunately this was the case for Nastia Liukin in 2008.
- During the trials for gymnastics, Liukin generally executed high-scoring routines until it came to the uneven bars event. Her father stood underneath while she spun rapidly around the bars, but failed to grab the lower bar only 30 seconds into the routine. She lay on the mat for a few moments, knowing that one microsecond had cost her her entire career.
- She finished her routine anyway and the crowd gave her a standing ovation.
3 – Hurdles
- China’s most famous athlete Liu Xiang unceremoniously ended his career when he failed to jump even a single hurdle.
- He won gold in Athens in 2004, but his attempt to compete in 2008 was a complete disaster. Xiang claimed that just as he was about to jump the first hurdle of his race, he felt an excruciating pain in his foot. Controversy started when it was alleged that Xiang knew he was injured before the race but competed anyway.
- After the incident, he limped back onto the track, kissed a hurdle and immediately announced his retirement from sport.
2 – The Torch
- Sometimes the athletes are not the only people who find themselves failing epically during the Olympics.
- The 2016 Olympic Torch ceremony in Brazil was absolute chaos. Even with a military escort, the torchbearers were subject to constant obstacles. One woman fell to her feet and nearly dropped the torch, another man was attacked by a fire extinguisher, and on another occasion, a motorcycle fell sideways injuring the rider. Luckily someone was there to take a selfies at the scene.
- Surprisingly, the torch never went out during the endless barrage of trouble-makers.
1 – Snapped Leg
- The most gruesome fail by far was arguably achieved in the 2016 vaulting event.
- French Gymnast Samir Ait Said was attempting to compete in the preliminaries when he ran and launched off the springboard, but seconds later landed on the ground with a horrifying ‘snap’. Said broke his lower leg so badly that the whole bone was bent sideways. The people who carried him off then accidentally dropped him again, as if he wasn’t suffering enough.
- Said tweeted the rest of his team from hospital, cheering them on and calling them warriors. He said he would be back on his feet and training for Tokyo 2020 in no time.
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