There's no doubt U.S. Sen. Harry Reid suffered nasty injuries during an intense New Year’s Day workout at his new home in Las Vegas.
During an interview with KNPR's "State of Nevada" radio program, the Senate minority leader talked about the scary incident:
"Three days a week I have an exercise routine. I do 250 situps, I some yoga-type stuff for a little while and then I’ve been using for the last three or [so] plus years, these bands. I use one that’s the second-strongest you can get, it’s dark grey. Anyway, I do those things hundreds of times three days a week. I do different routines. And I was doing almost finished at my new home in Nevada and the band broke and it catapulted me backwards and to one side. I crashed into a series of cabinets we have and fortunately it missed my temple by just a little tiny bit and it hit me in my right eye and it broke a number of bones around my right eye and broke four ribs and a few bruises other places."
A sad story, for sure, but what struck many folks though was not broken orbital bones and ribs, but the 250 situps he says he does several times a week - at the age of 75!
In his No Pity column on The Daily Beast, Tim Teeman says the senator’s experience had an unintended effect:
Harry Reid doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him; quite the opposite, it’s the first injury story where you end up feeling envious of the injured—especially as he may be significantly older than many of the readers of his sorry tale....
Somehow, instead of us being concerned over the possibility of his semi-blindness, Harry Reid just fitness-shamed America.
Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan seemed puzzled by the mysterious incident.
“Catapulted — by bands,” he wrote. “I still have no idea what happened to Harry Reid.”
Still, if you Google “resistance bands lawsuits” you get the idea that using these exercise bands carry some amount of injury risk. Especially in Texas.
Closer to home, a Glenside, Montgomery County woman filed a product liability claim in 2012, alleging an exercise band snapped and struck her in the face during a July 2010 workout, The Pennsylvania Record reported. Named as defendants in the lawsuit were the Taiwan-based Dalps & Leisure Products Supply Corp. and the Dick’s Sporting Goods store in the Franklin Mills Mall complex in Northeast Philadelphia.
The civil complaint, filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, alleges that as a result of the incident, Kate FitzGerald “suffered injuries to her face and eye, including, but not limited to, contusions, abrasions, lacerations, nerve damage and an eyebrow scar,” the Record reported.