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World record holder and double Olympic champion David Rudisha, 2016 in Sweden
Photo: IMAGO/Robin Lorentz-Allard/Aftonbladet/TT / IMAGO/TT
Kenya's two-time Olympic 800m champion David Rudisha has weathered a dangerous situation.
During an emergency landing of a plane with the world record holder on board last Saturday, the pilot only just prevented the plane from crashing, according to Rudisha.
According to official information, the former middle stretcher was unharmed.
"It was scary," Rudisha described the anxious moments in The Nation newspaper, "you literally hold your heart in your hands and pray to God.
We can only thank God that we are all still alive.«
"The pilot did an incredible job"
Rudisha, who was on his return flight from the Maasai Olympics - a spectacle in which young Maasai or warriors compete in various games - in his native region of southern Kenya, did not give any concrete information on the causes of the machine problems.
“After seven or eight minutes in the air, the engine suddenly stopped working.
The pilot saw an open area where he attempted to land the plane.
But a wing hit a tree, the plane began to spin and finally landed on the rocky field," the ex-athlete said in another interview with the BBC, simply: "The pilot did an incredible job making the plane so stable keep."
In 2019 he crashed into a bus
Rudisha escaped with his life seven days before his 34th birthday for the second time in about three years in a dangerous situation: In August 2019, the two-time world champion was also in Kenya with his SUV vehicle on a highway after a tire burst at high speed crashed into a bus, but suffered only minor injuries in the frontal crash.
Rudisha has held the world record over 800 m in 1:40.91 minutes since his Olympic victory in 2012. In 2016 he also won gold in Rio de Janeiro.
"I'm so excited, this is the greatest moment of my career," Rudisha said at the time.
He is the first athlete after New Zealander Peter Snell in 1964 to repeat his Olympic victory in the 800 meters.
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