French runner Alessia Zarbo has given team members, spectators and medical staff a moment of huge panic after she suddenly collapsed during the 10,000m race in the Stade de France.
Medical crews quickly ran to athlete when they noticed she was motionless on the track.
While the weather was warm and sticky, it is unclear what exactly sparked the 22-year-old’s worrying fall.
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The incident happened after about the 7000m mark. And Zarbo appeared to lose consciousness when she was on the ground.
Medical staff surrounded her as the race continued and the athletes ran past.
She was removed from the tack on a stretcher.
French news outlets have since reported that she had fainted, but it is still unclear why.
There also appears to be positive updates coming out of Paris with the athlete reportedly OK.
She was last in the race when she went down and it did not impact the other runners.
But fans were immediately concerned.
“Really hope Alessia Zarbo is alright!” one person said on X (formerly Twitter).
“Her collapse in the women’s 10,000m looked really nasty.”
The race also featured Australia’s Lauren Ryan who surprised many at the halfway mark when she took the lead.
But Ryan’s time out in front was short-lived and she finished thirteenth (the second-best result in a 10,000m Olympic race by an Australian woman ever).
“Everything was in place to have a great race and I feel like that’s what we did,” Ryan said after the event.
“We executed the race as well as we could have, except my coach (Lara Rogers) was probably like ‘don’t lead it’.
“But I felt comfortable enough to do it and I thought it paid off because we lost a bunch of girls and it made the pack a lot smaller when we got to the end. So I’m really happy.”
The race was won by Kenyan Beatrice Chebet, who also won gold in the 5000m.
Chebet finished in the time of 30:30.25.
Italian Nadia Battocletti 0.10 of a second behind Chebet in second place and Dutch athlete Sifan Hassan won the bronze in 30:44.12.