A fighter can get knocked down twice in the first round and still come back to win the bout.
But for Barbara Nwaba of the Santa Barbara Track Club, the two-day heptathlon at the IAAF World Championships in Beijing began with a knockout blow. In the 100-meter hurdles race, she lost her rhythm in the run-up to the first hurdle, crashed into the second hurdle and fell, regained her feet, but fell again over the fifth hurdle. She did not receive a score, leaving her an insurmountable 1,000 points behind the world’s best all-around women in track and field.
“It was not a good moment for me,” Nwaba said. “My family and friends were there. I was disappointed in myself.”