(Please note paragraph five contains language some readers might find offensive)
By Shadia Nasralla
YANQING, China (Reuters) – A blood-filled nose blocking his breathing did not stop Austria’s Daniel Hemetsberger from finishing Monday’s flagship Alpine downhill race at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Hemetsberger almost missed one of the gates early on and took a turn so sharply that he hit his nose with one of his poles, leaving a nasty gash. He clocked a finishing time 1.9 seconds slower than gold medallist Beat Feuz from Switzerland on place 21, blood splattered all over his ski suit.
“It did irritate me quite a lot during the race because I could tell as quickly as two gates further down that the blood was flowing and that was unpleasant,” Hemetsberger told reporters after the race.
“I just tried to keep my mouth open as wide as possible to get in a bit of air because my nose was filled with blood.”
The 30-year-old, who is currently number 8 in the downhill World Cup standings, added he had seen this kind of injury happen to other athletes on television, thinking “shit, this is grisly. And that’s exactly how it feels”.
Earlier in the race, Germany’s Dominik Schwaiger crashed and had to be taken off the piste in a stretcher.
(Reporting by Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
