NEWS: Olympic Athletes Brawl With Spectators

CULTURE: Olympic Athletes Brawl With Spectators

Buvaysa Saytiev, a Russian gold medalist in freestyle wrestling, took his quarterfinal bout with Murat Gaidarov of Belarus, off the mat. Way off the mat. After the match ended in controversy over 6 seconds of time added to Gaidarov's score, the brawlers exchanged punches and insults before the crowd rushed the mat, joing in the melee. Gaidarov had to be restrained by officials to keep from rushing the judge's table.
There is a history of bad blood betweem Saytiev and Gaidarov, but their display still came as quite a surprise to Olympic officials, who eyed each other nervously as the two began arguing and beating each other about the head and ears. When spectators began to join in, police had to be called in to break up the crowd.
Both athletes face fines of up to $10,000 and "the possibility of sanctions", according to FILA president Raphael Martinette.

Ha ha ah! Nice to see that tempers flare up in the best of situations!

things are going great at the olympics, earlier today i read about some poor marathon runner who'd been running first the whole time and then some jackass runs onto the road and bodychecks him causing him to lose the race a few miles before the finish.

well, he did get the bronze, so i wouldn't exactly say he "lost the race". but yeah, that was messed up. what did that protester think they could gain by fucking up some guy's dream?

There was a report on NBC that this same dude jumped on the track during a Formula One race last year, for which he got 3 months in prison.

Something tells me that the runner he tackled now wishes those drivers didn't quite have quite as fast reaction times as they do.

this is the nutbar who pushed the runner out of the race:



from the bbc sport story:

and on a happier note:

[Edited on Aug 29, 2004 by lostarchitect]

Are we sure this wasn't a setup by another competitor along the lines of the ice-rink schenanians we put up with a few years ago? It'd be intricate and complicated...but still possible!

He ran out onto a Formula One track? Hell, they should have kept the race going and let him find out what happens when a fifteen hundred pound car driving two hundred miles an hour hits a drunken, apocalyptic Irishman...

I saw the title of the thread and thought "Aw, crap.... what did the Americans do?" Have to admit I'm suprised and relieved to see it wasn't one of ours making an ass of themselves. We tend to do that.

[Edited on Aug 29, 2004 by ThisIsWhoWeAre]

i just love that the police statement started: "this man is irish. he is also drunk."

What's Joe Pesci doing out on the racing track??

"Am I funny to you? Am I some sort of clown? Do I make you laugh??"

That is kind of an oxymoron.

Oxymoron is when things contradict one another... like Jumbo Shrimp for example.

Drunk Irishman is just redundant.

If it really was a brawl between Olympic athletes and spectators the athletes would have won. There were more of them.

Talk about splat!!! I was watching that race, and he barely escaped with his life from that stunt. He was running along the driver's left side of the track and they started swerving to their right. He then started running toward the center of the track. Keep in mind this is right after a fast left turn, and that you are getting hard on the gas to top out at aroung 185 on the following straight. It looks like he dicided that wasn't a good idea, and decided to tackle something his own speed.

Here's some interesting pics of that incident: