Drone Nearly Takes Out Skiier Marcel Hirscher

Austrian skier Marcel Hirscher was out on the course at World Cup event in Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, on December 22nd, when out of the blue (or in this case, black since the race was at night) a drone carrying a TV camera came crashing down, narrowly missing the four time overall World Cup champion and 2014 Olympic silver medalist. Hirscher said later he was aware of something behind him but did know what it was and continued the race. He finished 2nd in the event behind Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen.

Here’s a video of the crash. The audio is in French, but you can certainly see what happened:

The International Ski Federation had agreed to allow the drone camera to cover the races, but according to the organization, the device was not to be in the air directly over the course and the drone pilot had not followed instructions. As a result, the Federation announced that it would ban camera drones from covering their events.