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You won’t want to mess with Jo-Ane van Dyk, the epic javelin thrower of South Africa.

The silver Olympic medal-winning athlete throws javelin sticks, originally meant for battle, like a real baddie. And if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when she has her chosen weapon in hand, you might just get a little puncture to the lungs.

Van Dyk, which must be short for Viking, qualified for Saturday’s women’s javelin final at Stade de France. Before her big day, she met with some people she knew by accident in Germany, who wished her good luck – but they probably meant the luck was for them as van Dyke had speared the husband with a javelin in 2021.

 

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Thankfully, the man made a full recovery and became friends with van Dyk, along with his wife. The couple had even named their daughter, now two, after her.

“So I met her and the father, the guy — he’s actually very nice. He’s not angry at me at all so I’m just happy he’s not angry,” van Dyk said per TimesLIVE.

“And she’s a very cute little girl.”

The Olympic opening ceremony on July 26 coincided with baby Jo-Ane’s second birthday.

Van Dyk also saw the scar at the top of the man’s chest, under the shoulder, where the javelin struck. “It’s still there,” she said, adding it punctured the lung.

“He was hospitalised.”

The incident in Halle, Germany happened as spectators were standing close to the field of the javelin-only competition and she threw the missile slightly off-course, with the wind pushing it further out as well.

“He wasn’t watching,” she added. “But he’s strong and striving.”

In fact, van Dyk narrowly missed impaling an official with her second throw in the javelin competition at the Paris Olympics on Saturday night. Apparently, she said afterwards she was glad she didn’t know at the time or else it might have derailed her competition.

Yahoo! Sports reports that in the javelin final, van Dyk was trying to better her previous throw of 63.93m in an attempt to overtake eventual gold medal winner Haruka Kitaguchi’s 65.80m throw.

With every ounce of strength, she hurled the spear, its arc aimed true, although fate took a mischievous turn and the javelin streaked toward an official, who remained blissfully absorbed in the adjacent high jump contest, unaware of the unfolding drama. It landed mere centimetres from the female judge, who stood oblivious to the narrow escape until a startled gasp from a fellow official shattered the spell.

The official standing on the side of the measured area then jumped in shock realising how lucky she was to not be impaled. “She was watching the high jump … it can happen, you’ve got to pay attention when there’s spears in the air,” Steve Hooker said on Nine’s Olympic broadcast.

In the end, van Dyk and Czech Republic’s Nikola Ogrodnikova made valiant efforts to beat Kitaguchi’s 65.80m throw but never topped it, claiming silver and bronze with throws of 63.93m and 63.68m, respectively.

Van Dyk won South Africa’s first field event medal at the Games to go with the men’s 4x100m silver from Friday night. Van Dyk’s silver was South Africa’s sixth overall (one gold, three silvers and two bronze), News24 notes. Her medal had also taken the athletics team’s count to two, which is two more than they had managed in Tokyo three years ago.

Despite having dropped liberal hints as to her form with a personal best throw of 64.22m in her only attempt in the qualifier on Thursday, the Worcester-born 26-year-old from Heidelberg still surprised all and sundry by grabbing one of the last three field event medals left in the Olympics.

“I hoped for it and I’m still amazed. I know what the other girls are capable of; in throws it’s up until the last throw, so you can’t be sure of anything. It was only when the fourth girl threw that I knew I was in the medals and I was like: ‘Woah! I have a medal!’.

“It was a crazy night, just seeing everyone in the crowd… I haven’t seen my fiance cry, almost ever, he cried. I haven’t seen my father cry, except maybe once or twice, he cried. I’m just happy for our country and I’m happy for the team.”

A World Junior Championships silver medalist in 2018, two-time African champion, and a silver medalist, as well as this year’s All-Africa Games champion, Van Dyk’s journey has been nothing short of remarkable. Her 10th-place finish at last year’s World Championships in Budapest, after a 15th place in her qualifiers in Eugene the year before, was yet another hint at her ascending trajectory in the sport.

In light of her growing accolades and rising momentum, the North West University student finishing with a medal in Paris might not have been the shocking revelation to the South African public that it seemed.

Although, admittedly, her near-fatal close calls are.

[sources:timeslive&news24&yahoo]