Clumsy stars, a cautionary tale

Sports stars are a surprisingly clumsy lot, as motorcycle legend Valentino Rossi and world ski champion Lindsey Vonn unwittingly demonstrated this month.

World champion racer Rossi may be adept at taking corners at breakneck speeds on his Yamaha, but the most menial of domestic chores proved beyond him.

The eight-time world champion was drawing the curtains at his Italian villa when he fell, smashing a glass table and injuring his hand and left foot, the wounds requiring stitches.

For American snow queen Vonn, champagne was her downfall.

Celebrating her downhill win at the alpine skiing world championships in Val d'Isere she cut into the tendon of her right thumb while opening a bottle of bubbly.

While Rossi was back on his bike days later Vonn's mishap scuppered her bid for a hat-trick of golds.

This pair are by no means alone in succumbing to freakish misfortune.

In January, French cyclist Jerome Pineau's right eye had a painful encounter with some battery acid.

"I was fiddling around with the battery on my scooter when suddenly it slipped out of my hands. Acid went into my eye, the pain was terrible."

It was a case of lights out for his compatriot and former world number one rider Laurent Jalabert who fell two metres from a ladder when changing a light bulb.

The accident at his home near Geneva in 2001 left him with three broken vertebrae in his lower back.

"I wasn't able to move straight away - I felt paralysed."

English footballers may get paid millions but ask them to switch channels with the TV remote control and they can't do it for tuppence.

Tottenham and Republic of Ireland striker Robbie Keane ruptured his knee cartilage after stretching to pick up his remote when at Wolves back in 1998.

It didn't prevent him from scoring for Ireland the next day against Malta but later his injury required surgery.

An identical fate befell David Seaman, the former Arsenal goalkeeper who pulled a muscle in his back trying to tape British TV soap Coronation Street.

Amusing and embarrassing, but Rio Ferdinand for one isn't laughing.

Eight years ago the then most expensive defender in the world was enjoying a bit of relaxation watching the TV at home.

His Leeds manager at the time David O'Leary takes up the story: "He was watching television and had his foot up on the coffee table.

"He had it there in a certain position for a number of hours, and when he got up, he had strained a tendon behind his knee."

Newcastle had reason to cheer though as Leeds, their defence weakened by Ferdinand's enforced absence, succumbed 3-1 the following Saturday.

Liverpool's former Danish keeper Michael Stensgaard injured his shoulder whilst ironing, while it was a humble bottle of salad cream that did it for yet another stopper, Wimbledon's Dave Beasant.

The salad dressing dropped on his foot causing sufficient damage to rule him out of a number of games.

Golfers are by no means immune.

Scotland's Colin Montgomerie had to pull out of the British Open at Sandwich in 2003 when he tripped on the way to breakfast as he looked up to the sky to check the weather.

The tumble left him nursing a swollen right wrist, battered knees and bruised pride.

US tennis star James Blake is another paid up member of the club of bizarre accidents. In 2004, the New Yorker broke his neck crashing into a metal net post at the Italian Open in Rome.

One of the earliest recorded mishaps took place in 1923.

Only the most anorak of baseball fans will remember Red Sox rookie Clarence 'Climax' Blethen, who thought he looked more intimidating on the mound if he took out his false teeth and put them in his back pocket.

Unfortunately, one day, he forgot to put the dentures back in and as one commentator at the time recounted he "bit himself in the ass" when he slid on second base.

Happily all of these incidents were not tragic, unlike Indonesian footballer Mistar, who in 1995 was killed when wild pigs stampeded his team's training ground.