Performing any athletic activity always involves the risk of injury.
But when you’re a competitive athlete, the risks increase exponentially simply because you’re pushing your body to such an extent that you have little margin for error.
Gymnastics is one such sport that needs total mind and body concentration in order to pull off your routines and win. At such a level, one is always walking a fine line between a perfect 10 and a leg bone snapped in half. One female gymnast almost experienced the latter after a nasty fall during her routine.
The footage, taken by the girl’s mother, showed the girl running to the springboard to launch herself into the air. But as she lands, her left leg suddenly slides off the landing mat and makes her fall.
Luckily for her, her coach managed to act quickly and caught her mid-air.
The video was captioned with: “When you compete vault you have two tries at it – the judges take the best one and that will be your score.
“This was my daughter’s first run on vault and when jumping back on her back handspring she went sideways and could’ve badly hurt herself.
“But her coach saw that she wasn’t aligned and ran in to catch her before she hit the ground.”
It’s no joke to compete at high-level athletic events and this is a reminder of what’s at stake.
An Auburn University gymnast was unfortunately not as lucky, suffering two broken legs after an acrobatic move gone awry. She had to be carried away on a stretcher.
Samantha Cerio was competing at the Baton Rouge Regional in April 2019 which was a competition under the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Cerio went for a handspring double front flip with a blind landing but fell short with the result that both her legs bent backward at an unnatural angle.
According to reports, both her knees were dislocated and she suffered multiple tears on her ligaments.
Jeff Graba, her coach, said afterward: “It was pretty tough to watch. She’s a trooper. The last thing she said was, ‘Go help the girls.’ The girls rallied around her. They’re doing this for her right now.”
Replaced!