Olympic Spillage #16: Dropping 432lbs on your head and the Dutch join the Team GB gold rush

Weighty problems for world’s strongest man, the British press go Dutch and why is Damon Hill dancing around the equestrian arena?

Painful day for world’s strongest man

We seem to have missed the entire weightlifting competition at the Olympics this time. Normally we while away many happy hours watching tiny men from the east of Europe lifting enormous amounts of weight in a flurry of powder and smelling salts. That’s them in the flurry by the way, not me.

Anyway, it seems that the big boys were in action last night, the superheavyweights. Weighing in at over 105kg, these lads, naturally, lift the heaviest weights. The reigning champ was German Matthias Steiner but the big fella didn’t retain his crown after his second snatch lift (stop it) went horribly, and dangerously, wrong.

As the above video shows, Steiner couldn’t hold up the 196kg (423lb) bar and it fell onto the back of his head and neck. Thankfully Steiner wasn’t badly hurt but he didn’t continue. He will be upset to lose his crown but probably happy he escaped without serious injury

Pesky captions

Very occasionally the photo agencies will let you down. As we know here, the name at the bottom of the picture isn’t always the person in the snap so mistakes will happen. Usually someone in the office will spot the error before it goes public, especially in newspapers where there are teams – admittedly smaller ones these days – of sub-editors to catch these things.

But a major mistake happened in two British papers today as both the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror showed the Dutch dressage team, bronze medal winners yesterday, and labeled them as the British gold winning team. The Express, as you can see below, even had the mistake on their front page.

Pictures from @themediatweets

Did no-one notice the orange uniform or the bronze, very ungold-looking, gold medals?

As the Twitter joke went, Roy Hodgson will be trying to pick Arjen Robben next.

Who’s that riding Damon Hill around the Olympic arena?

Speaking of dressage, as we often do, another funny moment happened in the event yesterday as one of the German riders, Helen Langehanenberg, took to the arena. Her horse’s name? Damon Hill.

We don’t know if it was an elaborate joke, a crazy F1 fan or just one of those things but one sight I didn’t think I would see at London 2012 was Damon Hill dancing around the equestrian arena.