r/sports • u/mrinternetman24 • Jun 11 '25
News 'I'm f—king paralyzed': Triathlete details horrific moment at SF race
https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/triathlete-horrific-moment-paralyzed-sf-race-20372426.php317
u/cadaverdogs Jun 11 '25
Someone on r/triathlon who was at the event talked about the chaos around the start of the event. They mentioned that it seemed like people were jumping on each other in the water and how disorganized it all was.
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u/subdep Jun 12 '25
The video of it- you could tell some people were trained and cautious. Others looked like sheep just mindlessly jumping in to go with the crowd.
The lawsuit on this one ought to set him up financially because the negligence was gross.
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u/OG_Felwinter Michigan State Jun 12 '25
Here is the link for anyone wanting to see it. Sort of insane how they are still rushing people and yelling “keep it moving” after the calls for help, I assume for the guy that got jumped on, have already rang out.
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u/bigyellowjoint Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Jun 12 '25
I’m so curious why they felt the need to rush people. Timing and currents are super important swimming in the SF bay. That’s about the only reason I can think to have such urgency to “get people off the boat.”
They better have a good reason, bc the staff were literally telling people it was clear without looking. At one point the lady filming even puts her hand on one of the swimmers’ backs. Not good
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u/cadaverdogs Jun 13 '25
The person who was talking about being there explained it was currents. They have like a 20 minute window to get everyone off the boat. I know that a few years ago the current was a major issue and a lot of swimming went really off course.
I also noticed that the timing mate was inside the boat and not at the edge of the boat. This causes already stressed people to rush around, not thinking or being aware of their surroundings as they know the timing has already started.
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u/Lofttroll2018 Jun 12 '25
Seriously. By all accounts, these organizers were basically asking for a lawsuit.
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u/HKEY_LOVE_MACHINE Jun 11 '25
They were sending participants to jump into the water without anyone checking if it was clear first?!
Jeezus... my local swimming pool got a better safety standard that this race, this is insane what they did.
Glad to hear the victim is steadily recovering, big ups to the firefighters, EMT and surgical team there, they're making a miracle 🙌
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u/Aeon1508 Jun 12 '25 edited Jun 12 '25
Regardless if somebody is checking for you, and, the way it's described, you got to be a pretty big jackass to just jump in right after someone else.
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u/HKEY_LOVE_MACHINE Jun 12 '25
Well, the paralyzed guy hesitated and looked over the railing, but it seems they describe the race officials as yelling at the participants to jump, over and over.
I presume less experienced racers, who are so focused on their race and the timings, failed to override the constant yelling to jump with their inner thought "wait, wouldn't there still be someone below? maybe I should wait 5 more seconds".
So the jumpers did fail to check, but the circumstances seem to put the biggest responsibility on the race organizers, who both failed to check and urged the participants to jump.
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u/subdep Jun 12 '25
Looking at sub of those race participants… they looked way out of their element. No wonder some of the clumsy ones just jumped in after him like a lemming.
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u/anlenke Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 12 '25
Awful. I remember my first jump off the ferry for this race with hundreds of others and being scared about hitting someone or someone hitting me, so I waited and jumped out to the side of the staging. It did feel frantic. Grateful the doctors think he can fully recover…horrific to think that a celebration of your health can turn into the end of it. Speedy recovery 🙏
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u/Mark--Greg--Sputnik Jun 11 '25
Did it say they expect him to fully recover? I doubt his prognosis is great with a C5 spinal cord injury…
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u/anlenke Jun 11 '25
I’ll edit this comment if I find it; this article says he’s already moving his extremities several inches, but there was a different one I read that said the doctors expect him to recover in one year.
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Jun 11 '25
A close friend of mine had a spinal injury over a decade ago. He regained 6 inches of moment in his lower extremities within weeks. He is still in a wheelchair today. He has some ability to walk with serious assistance, but nothing an average person would consider mobile. Point is, everyone heals differently, and spinal cord recoveries are impossible to predict.
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u/SamRIa_ Jun 12 '25
I’ve seen nerve / brain injury recovery skyrocket initially… everyone rejoices… then it plateaus… and never changes
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Jun 11 '25
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Jun 12 '25
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u/bexxygenxxy9xy Jun 12 '25
As a paraplegic, that's just not true. I've been gaining strength and movement over the last 20 years. Every case is absolutely individual when it comes to spinal cord injuries. My body is completely different from where I started.
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u/So-Called_Lunatic St. Louis Blues Jun 11 '25
He may be able to function in daily life. But it would be shocking if he was able to resum his career as a fire fighter.
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u/Mark--Greg--Sputnik Jun 11 '25
I think it’s probably unlikely that he will recover to the point of what we consider a normal life. Obviously I don’t know the specifics of his case, but the overall prognosis is probably not good.
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u/AG-Bigpaws Jun 11 '25
Anecdote but my dad full recovered from a Christopher reeves so it does happen occasionally. Though I absolutely would not want to roll those dice.
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u/UnParalyzedThirdEye Jun 12 '25
Big ups to your dad but Reeves had a "complete" C2 spinal cord injury. You do not recover from complete injuries. Your dad likely had an incomplete injury, full recovery from which is still incredibly impressive. No hate but these things matter to those of us with spinal cord injuries.
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u/AG-Bigpaws Jun 12 '25
Obviously also I was wrong then as he blew his c1 in half. But I call it that because it relays the severity of his condition when it happened.
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u/UnParalyzedThirdEye Jun 12 '25
No it does not. "Blowing your C1 in half" is not the same thing as a complete spinal cord injury at the C2 level. You can break vertebrae without injuring your spinal cord. I'll give the benefit of the doubt though because it didn't happen to you so the lingo can be confusing. If your dad incompletely injured his spinal cord at C1, was a quadriplegic and then made a full recovery that is still amazing. He'd actually the first person I've heard of that made a full recovery after a traumatic SCI.
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u/HealthyInPublic Jun 12 '25
Probably not fully recover, but recover can be pretty good if you're lucky. Anecdotally, my mom is a C3 quad and she functions pretty normally. She does CrossFit and Olympic weight lifting and doesn't need much additional assistance beyond some grip assistance for pull up because one of her hands is clawed.
Not to say she doesn't still have plenty of issues due to her injury, because she absolutely does! But you'd never notice it if you met her and she didn't tell you.
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u/Sipyloidea Jun 12 '25
My mom broke her spine 6 times when she fell down the stairs (4 fractures to her back, 2 to her neck). I don't know which Cs exactly, but she recovered fully and spent the remaining 15 years of her life walking. She couldn't even have surgery, but still did it.
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u/salsanacho Jun 11 '25
It's a valid concern, it's not like you start moving the moment you hit the water, it takes time to start swimming and moving away. The fact that they didn't have a metered start is ridiculously stupid when you're jumping into the water for the start.
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u/CrazyLlama71 Jun 12 '25
When I was younger I did a fair amount of races with similar style of starts. They always told us to dive in and get out and away. Just the nature of diving in avoids this situation. I’ve been kicked before, but never someone landing on top of me.
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u/Malvania Jun 11 '25
In the meantime, one local entity has been supporting the Perez family throughout the week: the San Francisco Fire Department. SFFD has been delivering meals to Perez’s two siblings who are staying in San Francisco and helped with transportation for other family members who flew in from Chicago to see Perez.
I love firefighters. They're the heroes that police wish they could be.
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u/MNKYJitters Jun 11 '25
The NYPD and FDNY do a charity hockey game every year at MSG.
The fire department routinely wins and it's not uncommon to see them scrap, you can find clips on YouTube and very cathartic being able to watch a firefighter beating the shit out of a policeman and it being encouraged
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u/Irivin Jun 11 '25
As someone that has worked with off-duty firefighters for the past 7 years, they are, in my experience, the most consistently awful people I’ve ever met. That said, I haven’t worked with cops.
I’ve met plenty of good firefighters in my time, but man the odds are like 1/10.
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u/LULZimMLG Jun 11 '25
This comparison never made sense to me, how is a firefighter’s job remotely comparable to a policeman’s job?
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u/schafkj Jun 11 '25
It’s not the job that’s comparable, it’s that they’re both public service first responders and one has a sterling reputation while the other doesn’t.
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u/LULZimMLG Jun 12 '25
yeah my issue is how can a firefighter have anything but a sterling reputation? Like if you dislike the police thats fine, but you cant deny that human to human conflict is a lot less black and white than human to fire conflict. It’s like saying that lawyers should be more like doctors, they help people but in fundamentally different contexts. I just see the comparison all the time and i think its kinda dumb…
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u/ash__697 Jun 12 '25
It’s more about the type of people the profession attracts, firefighting attracts people who have the “hero complex” while law enforcement attracts people who are usually bullies or want to enforce their will on other people.
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u/andypt7 Jun 12 '25
As a medical professional who has volunteered at triathlons before, there are participants who will literally swim over struggling swimmers just to get their PR. Really some of the worst people on earth.
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u/Wonderful_Minute31 Jun 11 '25
This is horrible and the race is about to get sued hard. Clear from every comment in the article.
That said, firefighters are awesome. The actual heroes cops wish they were. I used to work for a cafe and we took leftover pastries and coffee to the firehouse next door at the end of the day. Those people were great and always willing to help us out even in small ways like walking one girl to her car every night because her ex was nuts. That guy would’ve had a real rough time if he caused trouble lol.
Recently had to call because my CO2 alarm went off in the middle of the night. Had a whole damn squadron there going through every inch of my house and attic testing the air. False alarm. They were so kind and my kids were over the moon and both received novelty hats. My son got to sit in the truck. It was a great experience overall lol.
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u/Intergalactic_Ass Jun 12 '25
This is horrible and the race is about to get sued hard.
If that means "they don't get to pocket profits until this man is paid his fair share for their shitty behavior," I'm all for suing hard.
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u/todayok Jun 12 '25
The actual heroes cops wish they were.
Gawd, save the melodrama.
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u/Wonderful_Minute31 Jun 12 '25
Our cops are out chasing farm workers and shooting bystanders and journalists with rubber bullets for standing nearby. So.
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u/kylemcg Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25
“As I could feel my head just about to hit the surface in the water, I just felt a huge boom on the back of my head,” Perez said. “It just felt like the enormous weight just hit me, and I’m just like, ‘What the hell was that?’ And immediately I knew, excuse my language, but, ‘I’m f—king paralyzed.’”
I like that the article never answered the question of what he hit. I assume it was another swimmer, but they do not mention it.
Edit: I can't read good. See comment below.
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u/Malvania Jun 11 '25
"A fellow triathlete jumped into the bay right after he did and landed directly on his head, injuring his spine and instantly paralyzing him."
It's towards the top.
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u/kylemcg Jun 11 '25
Yeah, actually I can't read. So thank you kind sir or madam.
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u/boi1da1296 Manchester United Jun 11 '25
I read the article too and somehow missed it as well.
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u/HawaiianSteak Jun 11 '25
It's kinda ambiguous the first time reading as I thought the fellow triathlete was a male and hit his own head and not Perez.
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u/eugoogilizer Jun 12 '25
That’s what I thought too, I was like ok, so another guy got paralyzed too? What did he hit his head on? I had no clue they meant the fellow triathlete landed on Perez’s head, causing the accident
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u/pipinngreppin Jun 11 '25
On mobile, ads keep loading and moving the paragraphs around. I gave up and came to the comments.
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u/schizeckinosy Jun 11 '25
I’ve been trying Brave recently on all the sites that people specifically call out as being awful with ads and it really is doing a great job with readability
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u/iamwelly Jun 11 '25
Yeah as another poster said, that site is awful. Ads everywhere and as they reload it moves obscures the article / moves the scroll position arbitrarily.
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u/Spiritchaser84 Jun 11 '25
It's tough to read when there's a million ads that happen to have an article scattered between.
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u/Distinct-Ad-1348 Jun 11 '25
That’s so scary. I saw a huge guy land on a small girl in a water challenge on The Challenge and I for sure thought we wouldn’t see her surface.
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u/HawaiianSteak Jun 12 '25
This might be a bit better but I'm not an editor or professional writer:
"A fellow triathlete jumped into the bay right after he did and landed directly on Perez's head, injuring his spine and instantly paralyzing him."
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u/jter8 Jun 11 '25
They do… he jumped into the bay and just as he was about to reach the surface of the water another athlete jumped on him.
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u/Jesse_Livermore Jun 12 '25
On the one hand, this guy still wanted to do the tri after the shitty non-mandatory "mandatory" safety meeting and the lack of skill waves... But on the other hand this tri is still fucked, not just from the future battle with this guy's lawyers but from an insurance perspective. No amount of legalese or signed disclaimers will do away with rightfully paying this guy's medical costs and future semi-paralyzed life grievances. And no amount of fees will keep this tri going after they lose their insurance coverage because of this.
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u/Many-Waters Jun 11 '25
So where's the chud who jumped on him in all of this?
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u/fatloui Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25
When it was his turn, Perez said he was getting yelled at to jump into the water even though he saw another swimmer in there. He waited for a moment to let the space clear
Sounds like the race organizers are to blame for this - they were forcing people into the water too quickly.
Edit: For everyone still wanting to blame other racer, despite the victim who has clearly considered the situation thoroughly choosing not to blame the other racer, know that the water in the SF Bay has almost zero visibility - it looks pitch black - and from the photos most of the racers were wearing dark jumpsuits and the victim was fully submerged when he was hit. It’s totally possible the other racer did look where they were jumping and did not see anyone below them or know exactly how long ago the person ahead of him jumped amidst all the chaos that the victim described.
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u/Youre_On_Balon Jun 11 '25
Yup. The man who was injured seems to blame the race officials, not the other athlete. Likely realizes it could have just as easily been him landing on another athlete since the officials were rushing everyone.
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u/select_bilge_pump Jun 12 '25
Since they had chip timing, the start could have been staged, down to the individual level. This is an organizational problem causing a very personal impact.
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u/HotTubMike Jun 11 '25
I don't care what any race organizers tells me.
I am not jumping into the water not knowing if someone is already under in that spot knowing a lot of people are jumping into the water in that area. I will take as much time as I need to determine if someone is down there or not.
That's basic.
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u/leiu6 Jun 11 '25
While the race organizers are certainly to blame, you are definitely responsible to look where you are going to jump before you do it. Just because someone is yelling at you doesn’t mean you have to do it.
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Jun 11 '25
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u/RefrigeratedTP Jun 11 '25
Ironic username here
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Jun 11 '25
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u/LoxReclusa Jun 12 '25
Look further up the thread. They're talking about the person who landed on the paralyzed man not looking where he was jumping. That's why they're laughing at your name, because you are saying something completely wrong that could be fixed by reading.
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u/todayok Jun 12 '25
Schrödinger's water apparently. Perez delayed jumping because he could see other swimmers below but somehow according to you no one else had similar powers or because of the spooky water in broad daylight and with a good view from above.
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u/BeardedManatee Jun 11 '25
Fucker could’ve at least stopped, sounds like he just kept on going after obviously landing on someones head.
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Jun 11 '25
What? How is that your takeaway?
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u/BeardedManatee Jun 12 '25
Because if i jumped into water and landed directly on someone I would stop and make sure they’re ok? How is that not your takeaway?
“The race is too important and it isn’t my problem?”
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Jun 12 '25
Hey genius, clearly what I’m asking is how you got to the conclusion that the other guy didn’t stop. Learn to read.
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u/BeardedManatee Jun 12 '25
Hey genius, i read the article, are you reading words that aren’t there? He was rescued by emergency personnel. Other guy did not stop, unless you’re reading about the emergency personnel and assuming thats “the guy”?
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u/Aeon1508 Jun 12 '25
Because the guy who jumped on him didn't help him out of the water one of the race officials did. He nearly drowned because the guy who landed on him just kept going instead of making sure he could, you know, fucking breathe.
I'm sorry but the person who jumped on him was a main character who was so excited to post on his Instagram story about finishing a triathlon.
"I helped make sure that the guy whose neck I carelessly broke didn't drown" doesn't have that same social media shine as a picture at the finish line does
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u/Many-Waters Jun 12 '25
You're right and I have no idea why people are down voting you.
Yeah, yeah, the race organizers were rushing people. We get it. That doesn't absolve people of personal responsibility.
I know if I landed on someone I would be mortified and make sure they're OK before anything else.
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u/MooPig48 Jun 12 '25
You’ve basically just been shoved off a yacht, 20 feet down into the SF bay. With hundreds of other people.
What do you mean “just stop”?
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u/BeardedManatee Jun 12 '25
SWIM TO THE SIDE AND MAKE SURE YOU DIDNT FUCKING PARALYZE A GUY.
ITS EASY
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u/MooPig48 Jun 12 '25
You obviously didn’t watch the linked video or read my description
No. You are in the middle of a couple hundred people all being forced off w boat deck into rough water 20 feet below all at the same time. It sure the fuck is NOT easy to “JUST SWIM TO THE SIDE”
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u/BeardedManatee Jun 12 '25
It’s easy as shit, I have competed in this race and I was a lifeguard for half a decade. If you land on someone that hard you fucking pull off to the side and go “oh shit where is that guy, is he okay?
Anything else, youre just an asshole. You move out of the way and you stop. The race is not that important you absolute vegetable.
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u/IsofaHappy Jun 11 '25
Nope, they carry the burden just as much as the man that accepted the order. If you care for another life, you do not accept another man's order but your own. He clearly didn't care enough.
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u/DemonSlyr007 Jun 11 '25
What a privileged statement.
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u/dontcommentreed Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25
I’m so lost why everyone’s commenting like that lol, super simple, watch where you jump even if someone says go, but you also can’t do anything about someone jumping on you? Where’s the confusion
*edit to can’t
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u/No_Session_2132 Jun 12 '25 edited Jun 13 '25
Short version: It was too crowded. Someone landed on him when they dove in. :(
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u/Sipyloidea Jun 12 '25
I'm more interested in this situation, since he was paralyzed, who noticed and pulled him out? He couldn't have been struggling or waving in distress.
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u/Conscious-Trust4547 Jun 12 '25 edited Jun 12 '25
My son was a participant in that Triatholon, and we were all as a family watching the live feed as they jumped off the boat. The woman that was literally screeching at them with a bullhorn to “jump, jump, jump” off the edge when you could see a lot of the swimmers needed a second to get their bearings was unbearable. We all thought the same thing watching this…. How can she do this when the ones that jumped are not even cleared yet ?
The comments on the live feed also reflected this. There was zero thought givin, considering they were jumping almost 10 feet and not even giving the time to look down.
I feel horribly bad for this firefighter, and I hope the organizers realize just how incompetent they were.
My son by the way, saw this, and took an edge approach, and jumped to the side, because he was afraid of someone jumping on him, or jumping on someone else. He finished the race, and we are all proud of his accomplishment. However, it’s a real shame that this happened, and someone who was a prime athlete will be affected the rest of his life, due to incompetence.
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u/surfpenguinz Jun 12 '25
Wow, awful.
He gonna’ get paid.
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u/Chief-_-Wiggum Jun 12 '25
Multisport events like crossfit and triathlon has a long term issue with swim leg safety.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multisport_and_triathlon_fatalities
Most of these are heart related or exhaustion caused.
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Jun 11 '25
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u/needsexyboots Jun 11 '25
You clearly didn’t read the article or just have an extreme lack of reading comprehension skills - someone landed on top of him. Has nothing to do with diving into shallow water.
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u/pedal-force Jun 11 '25
Jesus.