Being a soccer referee isn't so bad after all

Thanks. I'd seen the report of the accident but not that the guy had died. At the D1 college and professional levels, I officiate horizontal jumps. (long jump/triple jump.) Not a lot of risk of injury to officials there. At the small college level, I do my share of throws (shot, discus, javelin, hammer), but I try to be the guy with the clipboard, standing behind the cage! The mistake that officials make when they see the implement coming at them is to try to outrun it. You are usually going to be better off going toward it while it is in the air so that it passes over you. The average USATF official is 60, so there is definitely a physical fitness issue with older, less mobile officials being out in the field on throwing events.

 

Hmmm... happily I've never had occasion to have to try to dodge a spear, but wouldn't your odds be better if you skedaddled sideways to the trajectory rather than along it?

 

I can't read the ESPN article (workplace firewall) but the ABC article has this paragraph -

"“He ran to the sector while the throw was still in the air,” Jochen Grundman, an organizer of the 66th Wilhelm Unger Games, told ABC News. “He probably thought he would calculate the airpath correctly before the javelin touched the ground.”"

So he was actually going towards the landing area to try and get the measurement as quickly as he could. I wonder if the wind altered the javelin's trajectory and he didn't notice?

 

Hammy or no pulled-hammy, the referee must think like a player, and a back-heel is a must move to liven things up:



Now that would be the Greek Super League's Anastasio "Tassos" Kakos, the man in yellow, who some claim to be the best midfielder in all EU!

 

Would have been a marvelous assist....