A speed skater at the Winter Olympics made a surprising post just a few hours before being injured in a race.
Polish athlete Kamila Sellier suffered a serious facial cut when another competitor’s skate struck her during the women’s 1500-metre speed skating event.
Speed skating can see athletes hit speeds of around 40mph as they power around the ice, leaving little margin for error.
During the race, an illegal pass led to Team USA’s Kristen Santos-Griswold falling. As she went down, her leg swung outward and her blade caught Sellier across the face.
The collision also involved Italy’s Arianna Fontana, a 14-time Olympic medallist. Santos-Griswold was later ruled out of the short-track skating semifinals in the fallout from the incident.
In the hours before the crash, Sellier had posted a video on social media that struck many as eerily timed given what happened next.
On her Instagram, the skater appeared to poke fun at how safe the sport is.
The clip begins with Sellier seated by the rink, lip-syncing to audio that asks: ‘seriously? is this safe?’
It then cuts to footage of speed skaters wiping out at high speed, before returning to Sellier as the audio concludes: “Yes, very safe. Fifty fifty.”
Video of the crash shows the blade rising and hitting Sellier on the cheek, leaving a deep cut just beneath her eye.
A spokesperson for Poland’s Olympic team has confirmed she underwent surgery after the incident and is recovering well so far.
“Kamila had surgery last night,” they said. “She’s in good condition. We’re waiting for further tests today, to check her eye for any signs of damage.”
With the cut so close to her eye, many viewers feared it may have been damaged, though officials indicated it appeared to be unaffected.
Poland’s speed skating chief, Konrad Niedźwiedzki, also raised concerns that Sellier could have injured her zygomatic facial bone, noting that doctors are still assessing the full extent due to swelling.
He said: “There is considerable swelling, so it’s hard to say at this point what else happened inside.
“I hope these are only superficial wounds, but we have to wait for the test results from the hospital. … There’s a huge, large, not to cause panic, large swelling, so it is possible that this is related to the fact that the zygomatic bones has been damaged or broken.”