European Athletics Championships: Triple jump attempt goes hilariously wrong
This has been a year for captivating athletic events. Fresh off of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham of all places, it is now all about the European Championships.
The biannual tournament is well underway and is going down in Munich, Germany.
Whilst there have been numerous occurrences of excellent sporting achievements, there is the unusual to be considered too.
Jesper Hellstrom of Sweden has made headlines of his own after a very inventive and rare technique in the triple jump. It wasn’t expected that he would make it as far as he did, narrowly making it into the final.
On his second attempt at this level, he had everyone in stitches laughing, even including himself. He misjudged and over-rotated, which led to him doing his best impersonation of a leaping salmon.
The Swedish Salmon as some have dubbed him, was laughing at his own misfortune in the triple jump event.
He ended up finishing down in tenth with his best distance being a 16.23. This was just over a metre behind the eventual winner, Pedro Pichardo from Portugal.
The single greatest triple-jump attempt I have ever seen.
— HLTCO (@HLTCO) August 18, 2022
pic.twitter.com/rDg8bjpfmm
Andrea Dallavalle of Italy and Jean-Marc Pontvianne of France completed the podium behind Pichardo.
Going back to Hellstrom and his unfortunate yet hysterical jump received a lot of love and jokes on social media. One user called it “Doing a Luis Suarez”.
This being a reference to the Uruguayan striker’s time with Liverpool.
The former Barcelona man had had some grief from then Everton manager David Moyes over his diving tendencies and so reflected this in a goal celebration.
He netted in the Merseyside derby, went straight over to Moyes and flopped right there on the floor in front of him.
The BBC Sport Twitter account shared the clip and poked fun at it, adding to Hellstrom’s self-deprecating humour on the matter.