BUDAPEST – A collision involving a cart carrying Noah Lyles and his opponents in the 200-meter semifinals at world championships Thursday sent glass shards flying into the right eye of Jamaica's Andrew Hudson, forcing him to race with blurred vision.
An aerial video taken outside the stadium shows the cart cruising down a sidewalk to bring the athletes to a holding room near the track. An oncoming cart hits the athletes' cart and a volunteer tumbles out of that cart.
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The video then shifts to inside the cart where Hudson is pressing his fingers against his right eye. He was cleared to compete, but after finishing fifth, said he had blurry vision in his right eye.
"I can’t see out of my right eye, but I’m OK," Hudson said after the race. “The doctor flushed out some shards of glass.”
World Athletics put out a statement saying Hudson had been cleared to race and the volunteer was “fine.” Later, Hudson was moved through to Friday's final due to a referee's decision.
This is the first world championships for the 26-year-old from Jamaica., whose personal-best time was 19.87 and was ranked 11th in the world this year.
“I did the best I could do,” he said after finishing in 20.38. “I was sitting in the middle of the room for like 20 minutes, trying to have a decision if I was going to compete or not. I worked hard to be here. And even under circumstances, everybody has hurdles in life. If I can run I’m going to try my best. So I tried.”
Lyles won the race in 19.76 seconds to make Friday night's final, where he'll try to defend his 200-meter title and add it to the 100 he won earlier this week. Alexander Ogando of the Dominican Republic finished second.
The scare outside the track overshadowed most of the news inside it.
That led with a victory for 400-meter hurdler Femke Bol, a feel-good comeback for her after her fall at the end of the 4x400 mixed relay on opening night cost the Netherlands a medal.
Bol was always better known as a hurdler, but despite running times that would have broken records and won Olympics when she was a kid, she has been running in the era of Sydney McLaughlin, who has left everyone in the dust while setting world records four times over the last 26 months.
McLaughlin took this year off from hurdles, leaving Bol as the world's best, and she did not disappoint. She finished in 51.70 seconds to beat second-place finisher Shamier Little by 1.1.
In the 100 hurdles, Jamaica's Danielle Williams beat Olympic champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn by .01 to capture gold. Keni Harrison of the U.S. took bronze, while defending champion and world-record holder Tobi Amusan finished sixth.
Canada's Camryn Rogers won the hammer throw ahead of two Americans — Janee Kassanavoid and 2019 world champion DeAnna Price.
Antonio Watson won the 400 meters in 44.22 seconds to make it two gold medals for Jamaica.
But the Jamaican on everyone's mind was Hudson, who was on what should have been the most routine part of his day — the ride in the golf cart to the track — when things came unraveled.
Their race was supposed to be the first of three semifinals, but it got pushed back to the end for a delay of around 30 minutes.
“It was a big fright,” said Tarsis Orogot, who finished third. “We’re not paying attention. We were all just locked in and then out of nowhere, someone shoved into us there.”
“It throws everybody off,” said fourth-place finisher Brendon Rodney. “You have a delay, so what are you going to do?”
All Hudson could do was line up and go. Afterward, he said he planned to go back to the medical tent to further assess the damage. He'll be in the gold-medal race Friday — if he is able to go.
“I don’t know what happened. It’s a blur, literally,” Hudson said. “The race was a blur. My eyesight is a blur. I’m going to go make sure my eyesight is OK.”
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AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports