Posted by Marathon Man on September 09, 2001 at 12:53
I know of 5 pants pooping accidents in sports, which have been broadcasted on TV during the years. It would be great if someone could order a video of this scenes from TV broadcasters and post a capture somewhere.
In 1982 triatlete Julie Moss crawled to the finish line with here pants clearly wet and loaded during the Hawaii Iron Man triathlon. This was at the beginning of triathlon history and it made this sport famous all over the world. There was also a discussion here on National German TV in which an expert stated that Julie moss sort of became paralyzed from exhaustion and that this caused here bladder and sphincter to give up. I've also read an interview in a book about triathlon where Julie Moss described the finish. She was crawling to the finish and felt that she needed the bathroom badly and: 'whooosh!, I could skip that out of my mind'. ABC originally broadcasted this triathlon and should have it in its archives.
Also in 1982 Marathon athlete Carla Beurskens was leading the women's marathon of Athens. She was given a diuretic pill before the race because she was constipated. In stead of doing its job before the race the pill started to work during the race and this made her do poo-poo in her pants. A newspaper started an article about this race with' running with your pants loaded is not easy. That was what Carla Beurskens found out during the female marathon in Athens yesterday'. I've also read an interview with Carla Beurskens where she described how she had to stop running for a while and could only go on after she had cleaned herself a bit with pieces of news paper which where handed over by supporters along the course.
In 1985 and 1986 Grete Waitz won the New York marathon with her pants loaded. In her autobiography World Class there is a chapter about toilets. She writes: 'in 1984 I squatted between two parked cars. In 1984 and in 1985 I just kept running despite the fact that my diarrhea was broadcasted on national TV all over the world. But I was to concentrated on running to be embarrassed about it'. On this board someone who saw this race wrote that she was running with a roll of toilet paper in one hand, and the announcers mentioned that she had had diarrhea all the day and night before. She kept pulling at the bottom of her running outfit, pulling it away from her body like she was going to just poop it out into the open or something.
In 1998 Catherina McKiernan seriously pooped her shorts half way the London Marathon and crossed the finish line with poop smeared all over her legs. It was all on TV for an hour or so. As she crosses the finish line she looked down and sees the mess and begs the officials to find something to cover it. The TV coverage did not hide anything! Links:
http://www.coolrunning.com.au/editorials/1998e007.shtml
http://www.activeusa.com/story.cfm?story_id=349