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Friday’s Hot Clicks: Harvard Runner Wins Two Races Despite Turning His Foot Into a Bloody Mess

Kieran Tuntivate won two Ivy League championships after injuring his foot running on one shoe. 

Dan Gartland

Kieran Tuntivate

Has anybody seen a toe?

Harvard senior Kieran Tuntivate won two races at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships last weekend, but at what cost?

Tuntivate, one of the best collegiate distance runners in the Northeast, ran into trouble at the beginning of his 3,000-meter race when he was forced to abandon his left shoe. Even still, he came back to win the race by overtaking the lead on the final lap.

“When the shoe came off, I was really flustered for a lap or two,” Tuntivate told the Harvard Crimson. “I knew I wouldn’t run well if I let it get to my head. I took a few deep breaths and just settled in and tried to keep with the pace.”

But the partially barefoot run came at a cost. Tuntivate posted a photo on Instagram after the race showing how the rough surface of the track had chewed up his foot. It’s truly disgusting. (You can see it by clicking the arrow on the right side of the Instagram post below or by clicking here.)

This video shot by teammate Anthony Denitto and edited together by John Fish (another Harvard runner with a massively popular YouTube channel) shows the foot in the immediate aftermath of the race. It’s a total mess, with bloody flaps of skin hanging off the sole.

“I probably noticed it about 2,000 meters in,” Tuntivate told the Washington Post. “I felt the skin start to peel away, and then it clumped up underneath my foot, and it felt like running on a pebble. The final lap was probably the hardest. It was a tough sprint to the finish, and the curves on the indoor track are so tight, I felt my foot slipping. I really zoned out pretty hard during that middle section between my shoe coming off and when it started to get painful.”

Trainers cleaned up the foot and told Tuntivate to use crutches, leaving the senior doubtful he’d be able to participate in the 5,000 meters the following day. But he was surprised how good he felt in the morning and decided to give it a go.

“The following morning I came down to the track to get it cleaned again, and like an hour and a half before the race, I went back to see the trainer, got it redressed and rebandaged so I could maybe give it a shot to race on the 5K,” Tuntivate told the Post.

"The trainer gave me a lot of freedom in my own choice. As long as I was comfortable running, he was pretty sure it couldn’t get worse. About a mile into my warm up, I got used to it. I sat down with my coach just before the race, and he set up a plan with my teammate to help me get through the beginning section to get me comfortable in the race.”

Tuntivate went out and won that race, too, edging Columbia’s Brian Zabilski by about two seconds. He took the next few days off.

How the Phillies found out about Bryce Harper

Bryce Harper’s deal with the Phillies was just as much of a shock to the manager and players as it was to the general public. The news came down shortly before 3 p.m. ET Thursday, while the Phillies were playing two split-squad games against the Orioles and Blue Jays. The Philadelphia contingent in Clearwater playing against Baltimore found out about the deal from fans in the stands.

“We had some fans behind us who were sharing moment by moment tweets with us,” manager Gabe Kapler told reporters. “Literally four fans right behind where we were sitting were telling us terms and who was tweeting what. We were like, ‘Who is making the reports?’ We had to make sure that this person is credible.”

They were.

There’s nothing like 14,000 Long Islanders chanting “asshole”

Though it wasn’t nearly as deranged as the video from earlier this week, the sentiment of Islanders fans’ reaction to John Tavares was the same. Tavares took the ice at the Nassau Coliseum last night for the first time as a visiting player after leaving this summer to join his hometown Maple Leafs.

Fans even booed him after the team played a tribute video on the jumbotron.

One of the more bizarre taunts Isles fans had for their former captain was based on this photo Tavares shared after signing with Toronto.

It wasn’t as cringeworthy as the “pajama boy” nickname one of the fans in the aforementioned video used, but fans still chanted “where’s your jammies” and “it’s your bedtime” as the home team cruised to a 6–1 win.

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Here’s the back page of Friday’s Newsday, the Long Island newspaper.

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Email dan.gartland@simail.com with any feedback or follow me on Twitterfor approximately one half-decent baseball joke per week. Bookmark this page to seeprevious editions of Hot Clicks and find the newest edition every day. By popular request I’ve made a Spotify playlist of the music featured here. Visit our Extra Mustard pagethroughout each day for more offbeat sports stories.

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Dan Gartland
DAN GARTLAND

Dan Gartland is the writer and editor of Sports Illustrated’s flagship daily newsletter, SI:AM, covering everything an educated sports fan needs to know. He joined the SI staff in 2014, having previously been published on Deadspin and Slate. Gartland, a graduate of Fordham University, is a former Sports Jeopardy! champion (Season 1, Episode 5).

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