AFCON 2023 – Drama at the finish line

The finish line is the very end of a race when an athlete breasts the tape and runs across the line. It is usually a thrilling and happy time to get to cross it.

Sometimes, however, crossing it may be harrowing, challenging, difficult and heart-wrenching, like the famous case of Juli Moss.
The story of Juli Moss

In 1982, Juli was a young American student researching exercise physiology thesis and using a new sport at the time, Ironman Triathlon, a three-in-one event involving swimming, cycling and a mini-marathon, as her subject.

Without much pre-event preparation or special training to prepare her, she decided to participate in the race. Towards the end of the grueling event, as dusk settled, she was first into the stadium for the final lap of the race. She was the clear leader of the race by up to 2 miles. It was impossible to catch her, under normal circumstances.

But then, with no previous experience of the event, she had run herself out of gas and fast was dehydrated by the time she ran into the stadium for the last lap around the tracks and the final stretch.

Then, she started to stagger and run across the tracks. She fell, rose to her feet, stumbled and staggered along and fell again. Urged on by the crowd and the officials by the tracks, she started to crawl.

A television camera at the stadium had started to focus on her, beaming live to people watching at home fascinated by her effort and calling each other up to tune-in to the channel and watch a most dramatic finish to a race.

Juli crawled on, and just as she was about a metre to the end, the TV camera still covering her effort on the track, recorded a pair of running legs, belonging to Kathleen McCartney, who had been over three minutes, or so, behind her when