Utah photog hit by javelin takes his own photo
Surely you saw the story on the wires this weekend about the photographer in Provo, Utah, who was shooting a high school track-and-field event when he crossed a no-no area and found himself impaled in the leg by a javelin.
What I didn’t know until tonight was that he kept right on taking pictures. And since he — “he” meaning Ryan McGeeney of the Ogden, Utah, Standard-Examiner — had become the story, he shot himself.
With his camera, I mean:
Ryan McGeeney/Standard-Examiner
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Roy Burton of the Standard-Examiner reported that McGeeney was shooting a discus event but crossed into the area of the field being used for javelin:
“It basically came from about my seven o’clock or eight o’clock,” [McGeeney] said. Right before it hit, the official started to say ‘Look out! Look out!’ and I started to look over to the javelin right when it went through. There was the kind of tight feeling in the skin where I could say, ‘oh yeah, it went through me,’ but it wasn’t real painful.”
Medical personnel determined quickly not to remove the javelin at the scene.
“I was very lucky in that it didn’t hit any blood vessels, nerves, ligaments or tendons. It just went through the skin,” McGeeney said.
An emergency medical technician cut most of the javelin off, leaving about a foot and a half of the tip in McGeeney’s leg before he was transported to the medical center.
After an incision was made and the offending javelin lifted out, the wound was cleaned, sewn up with 13 stitches and bandaged.
Back on the job, McGeeney said it was his pride that suffered most.
“It was pretty embarrassing.” he said. “I just felt like a jackass. I wasn’t scared. You can tell right away when you’re hurt really bad. I just knew I wasn’t really injured.”
An amusing note from a follo moved Monday by the AP:
“One of the first things that came to my mind was, ‘Good thing we brought a second javelin,’” [athlete Anthony] Miles’ coach, Richard Vance, said Monday.
For what it’s worth, the kid won the state title.