Weirdest things you've ever seen at track meets?

Lopez Lomong miscounting laps at Payton Jordon 2012.

RIP David Torrence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTxsYV8DHu0

Various vaulting poles breaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX4kuF6GE3s

RegionalAtBest wrote:

At the State Finals we had a huge swarm of hundreds of bees come out of the woods and fly thru the bleachers from one end all the way to the other. It freaked out all the parents and spectators. Everyone was ducking for cover.

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That happened when I was at the Olympic Festival in Colorado Springs in 1983. I remember Lynn Swann reporting for tv and how small he was for an NFL star.

I also remember being short on money and leaving the meet after saturday missing world records in both 100 meter races run on Sunday!!

At an indoor meet at Texas Tech, the 3k was getting pretty physical (at the time the track was a circle, no straightaways) the guy in front of me clipped another guys foot and then punches were thrown on the track as the rest of the field had to run out to lane 4/5 to get around them...

stateroftheoblivious wrote:

Various vaulting poles breaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX4kuF6GE3s

lol, does the IOC block their videos from Letsrun?

Unsuspecting jumper takes a javelin to the back, just out of his reach.

https://youtu.be/KKxXrdVjeLQ

Count Chocula wrote:

High School:

At an invitational, kid on my team cheated in the mile by running the first 250m and then hiding behind a small set of bleachers on the infield (behind the end zone of the football field). During the last lap he came out after the lead group of 4 passed but couldn't outkick any of them. Took surprisingly long for him to get DQed.

A lot of the posts on this thread have been good, but the thought of some dude jumping into a mile race with 150m left and still getting his doors blown off legitimately made me laugh out loud.

When I was in HS in the early 70's, there were these two guys each from a different school in the same league as my team, so I saw them race many times over the season. They were both pretty much always in the second heat (slower) of the mile and would have tight races. One was about 5'4" and the other about 6'2", so their confrontations were pretty memorable.

In one of the late season championship races, again in the second heat of the mile, they are coming down the finish and the short guy suddenly surges by the tall guy. Tall guy reaches out, grabs short guy by the shoulder and pulls him back, so tall guy can win by half a step. The place went nuts. Divided between people laughing or yelling for the DQ.

First meet of the season last weekend. I was warming up and stretching in the bull pen and some turd was rambling on about grind points. He wouldn't shut up. "Mileage grind" and "school grind" and "work grind". Complete weirdo. He kept asking people how many grind points they were planning to use in the race. Dude, get a life.

I saw this happen at one meet. Another team - our rival - was trying to qualify for the DMR for nationals (hs), and our 4:10 miler was leading off. He threw in surges and backed off every 100m so the time would be slow; they missed out on the nationals qualifying time by a few seconds. It’s petty but it worked

I saw a similar thing. The favorite to win the 1600, who had won the 3200 pretty convincingly before, had no energy and was outkicked in the last 150 to finish either 2nd or 3rd. He was upset, briefly congratulated his competitors to not look like a complete d*ck, and then just walked off to basically the 300m mark and sat by himself for like 15 minutes, taking off his shoes angrily and smacking the ground for that amount of time.

He then walked back to his team, was told he ran well, but then just sat by himself angrily for a bit more. I don’t blame him, and having that “pure rage” can be useful, but it’s definitely a somewhat douchey move.