Kenya’s two-time 800m Olympic champion David Rudisha apparently has a guardian angel.
During a dramatic emergency landing of a plane with the world record holder on board last Saturday, the pilot, according to Rudisha, only just prevented the plane from crashing through clever maneuvers. According to official information, the former middle stretcher was unharmed.
“It was scary,” Rudisha described the anxious moments in the newspaper “The Nation”, “you literally hold your heart in your hand and pray to God. We can only thank God that we are all still alive.”
Rudisha, who was in his home region of southern Kenya on the return flight from the Maasai Olympics, did not provide any specific information about the causes of the machine problems.
“After seven or eight minutes in the air, the engine suddenly stopped working. The pilot saw an open area where he tried to land the plane. But a wing hit a tree, the plane started a spin and finally landed on the rocky field,” said the ex-athlete in another interview with the “BBC”: “The pilot did an incredible job keeping the plane so stable.”
Rudisha escaped with his life seven days before his 34th birthday for the second time in around three years in a dangerous situation: In August 2019, the two-time world champion was also in Kenya with his SUV vehicle on a highway after a tire burst at high speed crashed into a bus, but suffered only minor injuries in the frontal crash.
Rudisha has held the world record over 800 m in 1:40.91 minutes since his Olympic victory in 2012. In 2016 he also won gold in Rio de Janeiro.