French long jumper Salim Sdiri
The incident occurred midway through the evening when Finn Tero Pitkamaki slipped at the end of his run-up, hurling the javelin to the left of the landing area and spearing Sdiri in his right side as he crouched in the long jump warm-up section.
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"He was hit on the right. He is conscious, but we don't yet know how deep it went..." the medical officer for the Italian Athletic Federation, Giuseppe Fischetto, told Reuters immediately after the incident.
A shocked-looking Pitkamaki held his head in his hands after the incident but managed to regain his composure to take his fourth throw in the competition.
In January, Olympic decathlon champion Roman Sebrle was impaled by a javelin in a training accident.
The Czech world record holder was hit in the right shoulder while crossing the field at his training camp in South Africa and needed 11 stitches in the wound.