Finn skier Jon Sallinen has been caught on camera in a shocking crash.
On Thursday, February 17, during the Freeski halfpipe qualifying round of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Sallinen gave a nearby camera operator a lot more than they bargained for with the nearest close-up shot they possibly could have hoped of receiving.
The star was halfway through his run when the collision occurred, in an incident which has since been branded as 'a very graphic representation of the dangers involved in freestyle sports'.
Losing control on the left lip of the pipe, the skier soared into the camera operator and their equipment, causing their camera to nearly go flying over the edge, before both operator and sportsman fell to the ground.
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Eurosport commentator, James Webb, observed: 'He pushed so far off that first wall. It seems his weight was too far forward and he couldn’t regain it'.
'Catches an edge, bang! Sallinen’s taken a good body slam on the top of the pipe, that will have hurt,' 1994 Great Britain representative Richard Cobbing added.
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The tense footage has sparked a mixture of responses from fans, and left me thankful that I've never gone skiing.
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Some were outraged by the fact the camera operator was placed in such a position in the first place, questioning why the athlete wasn't able to restart his run. 'Seems a bit harsh to lose out because of that,' one noted.
Another joked: 'Guess he didn’t Finnish then...?'
Meanwhile, others called for the lucky operator's close-up shot to be released, showing the athlete, as one user so delightfully put it, 'teabagging' them.
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While Sallinen was able to pick himself up and finish the run, the judges were left as unimpressed as the camera operator likely was, scoring the skier an 18 out of 100, New York Post reports.
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'I wasn’t even sure if I was gonna ski on my second run after my crash, I hope the cameraman is OK, I landed directly on him,' Sallinen reflected.
Perhaps Sallinen was attempting a cool new trick, using the camera operator as a boomerang to try and send himself speeding into the lead. At least he didn't just completely ski the entirely wrong way like Jarl Magnus Riiber, who similarly missed out on a medal in the men's Nordic combined event.
Sallinen's performance saw him ranked 23rd overall.
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