The setting for this horrifying video is the Eurasian Weightlifting Championship, held May 19 in Khabarovsk in southeastern Russia. The central figure is 20-year-old Russian weightlifter Yaroslav Radashkevich, who is attempting to squat 250 kilograms, or about 551 pounds. The weight turns out to have been more than his poor skeleton could handle, as was quickly revealed in loud, explosive fashion. Fair warning, this video is real, real gross.
(For people who absolutely do not want to hear the loud sound of a leg suddenly snapping like dry fettuccini, there’s a decidedly less traumatic but still horribly gruesome photo in this New Zealand Herald story.)
Radashkevich told Amur Info that he’d been experiencing pain in that area of his leg for two weeks prior to the event, but decided to proceed with the lift anyway, even as the pain intensified during his first two tries. Needless to say, that turns out to have been an extraordinarily bad idea. For his perseverance, Radashkevich fractured the absolute hell out of the tibia and fibula in his right leg, and told Life.ru that “the consequences are such that now I’m unlikely to return to this sport.”