Yesterday, a video made its rounds on the internet showing a guy, Angus Meldon of the National University of Ireland Galway, thundering down the homestretch of his 800 meter heat. With about 50m to go, a big rubber band used for the pole vault warm-up was slung from an errant pole, snaked toward the track and wrapped itself around Meldon’s face. It did everything but bring him to his knees. The band wrapped around his legs as he he hobbled to the finish.

Has anything like this ever happened before? A quick Google search and straw poll among the Citius staff resulted in a unanimous: absolutely not.

Track and field, though, isn’t bereft of freak occurrences. Long perceived by the pedestrian public and pearl clutching mothers as a non-contact snoozefest, relegated to wusses and nerds, we at Citius Mag are here to say that “yeah, football has CTE, but track and field can be nuts, too!”

So without further ado, I’d like to present an exhaustive, incomplete timeline of disaster on the track:

Tero Pitkamaki employs medieval warfare on innocent bystander

If it can happen to the best in the world, it can happen to you.

A good ol’ fashion clock cleaning

This is a thing that happens. It’s track’s equivalent of a linebacker taking out the camera guy, except much, much more sad.

What could go wrong?

Aside from being impaled by a javelin, this might be the scariest one.

Man vs. Nature

I’ve never trusted hooved animals. If deer ever decided they wanted to be the dominant species, I’m positive they could do it.

Man vs. Man

LOOK OUT! NOWHERE IS SAFE!

Man vs. Machine

Sure, we didn’t take Segways seriously for a while. They were for helmet wearing tourists and airport security. But then the Segway went and killed its creator. Then it set its sights on the greatest sprinter that ever lived. You can almost hear it say, “Watch your back, humans.”

If that didn’t show you we should all think of track and field as a TOUGH sport, with plenty of SCARY variables, go ahead and take a look at our pal Llewellyn Starks (or don’t, it’s pretty gross). All of this to say that, indoor or outdoor, road or the dirt, track is a dangerous game, and if you’re not ready to play with the big dogs, you could get pegged by a javelin.