Evan van der Spuy, 16, was competing in a weekend race in a wildlife park when a leaping hartebeest, an antelope that can weigh more than 200 kg, crashed into him, race organizer Max Cluer said in an interview.
Cluer says van der Spuy was not badly hurt and the hartebeest returned to his herd to graze. Johannesburg's Beeld newspaper quoted van der Spuy as saying he was briefly knocked unconscious and spent a night in the hospital. He said he remembers little, but has "the broken helmet to prove" the wild encounter happened.
Video by a fellow rider — punctuated by an off-camera exclamation of "holy cow!" — was posted on YouTube on Monday and had been viewed more than 5 million times, when it was the most shared and most viewed video in both South Africa and the United States. According to YouTube Charts, it was the most viewed video around the world of those uploaded this week.
