Australian para athlete Sienna Newton's Commonwealth Games debut was disrupted when a wardrobe malfunction prevented her from completing her final long jump attempt.
The 19-year-old brain cancer survivor was preparing for her sixth and final attempt in the women's T38 long jump when her tracksuit pants became entangled with her spikes. As the countdown clock ticked down, officials and fellow competitors rushed to assist Newton, eventually tearing the pants to allow her to remove them.
Despite the commotion, Newton reached the runway with less than 10 seconds remaining but ultimately pulled out of the jump, later explaining she had not started from her usual run-up marker. She finished the event in fifth place with a personal best of 4.70 meters, achieved on her fifth attempt.
Newton, who has no feeling in her left hand and weakness down her left side following surgery to remove a brain tumor in 2015, shared her experience on social media. "Definitely not how I imagined my Commonwealth Games debut would go," she wrote. "And yes, if you tuned in, you would've seen the chaos that was my last jump. Ironically, I think that was the most airtime the T38 long jump got all day."
She humorously added, "Yep, it was my pants. They're now officially ripped, so if @valoursport has a spare pair lying around, let me know."
Newton clarified that she had begun trying to remove the pants earlier in the competition, but the situation became complicated by the countdown clock and the physical challenge of managing it with her affected left hand.
"Between the countdown clock and trying to wrestle off a pair of pants with a left hand that I can't feel, it wasn't exactly an easy task," she stated. She also noted that according to the rulebook, she should have been granted another jump under protest.
Newton earned her spot on the Australian team after jumping 4.59 meters at the Oceania Championships in Darwin in May. She returned to athletics about a year after her surgery, initially competing against able-bodied athletes before receiving her para-athletics classification. She studies acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney and trains under coach Andrew Murphy.