The sound of the leg snapping was audible from down on the floor to up in the rafters.
The next sound was a collective gasp, then a groan, then silence.
French gymnast Samir Ait Said collapsed on landing after his vault during qualifying here on Saturday, his left tibia breaking on impact and his leg twisting grotesquely away from his thigh.
The 26-year-old grabbed his leg and covered his face with his right hand as trainers surrounded him for several minutes.
A wheelchair was rolled out to the side of the mat where he lay. It wouldn’t be used.
Said was strapped to a stretcher and carried off as sympathetic fans cheered.
Teammates went on with their rotation, bravely going ahead despite knowing what had happened to their teammate.
“I’m very upset,” Axel Augis told Yahoo Sports after the event. “Mostly sad [for him]. All that work for nothing. It’s so hard to see his work burn.”
France coach Denis Charlieux appeared in the mixed zone later, saying Said had been taken to the hospital and awaited further information from doctors. He called the day “a nightmare.”
“It’s so hard to deal with something like that,” he said through a translator. “He would be in the final if it didn’t happen.”
Later in the evening, the official feed of the French gymnastics federation tweeted that Said had a double tibia fracture and wanted to return for 2020.
There were other falls on the vault Saturday; American Jake Dalton nearly faceplanted on his landing. U.S. men’s coach Mark Williams told reporters the vault had “a little extra kick to it.” Yet Charlieux denied that there was anything problematic about the apparatus.
Said is the son of Algerians and was described in a recent newspaper account as “the main face of artistic gymnastics in France.” Asked to describe his personality, Augis called Said “fascinating” and “a fighter.”
When asked what this meant for the team, Augis said, “We’ll finish maybe in last.” Only the top eight teams move on to the final, and France was in eighth after two of three subdivisions.
The IOC official Twitter account sent support for Said, writing, “Lots of love from the Rio 2016 team.”
(Warning: Graphic photo below.)
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