The first, involving 11-time athletics world champion Usain Bolt, was remarkable for many different reasons.

Happy celebrating his 200 metres success in Beijing, Bolt was taken out, for want of a better phrase, by Chinese snapper Tao Song after his segway scooter toppled over after colliding with the camera rail. Bringing down the great Jamaican from behind at great speed, it could have been a career-ending injury, and you feel for most of the mere mortals who competed in the Bird’s Nest Stadium last week it would have been.

But barefooted Bolt, of course, was fine, even managing to roll over with something resembling elegance before dusting himself off and checking the cameraman was okay.

Following plenty of jokes about him being the “only man to take down Bolt”, and a saboteur acting on behalf of Justin Gatlin, Tao presented Bolt with a bracelet by way of apology. A nice touch.

The second case involving Slovakian cyclist Peter Sagan was slightly less tranquil. A similarly successful star, albeit one who has had to endure rather too many runners-up finishes for his liking in recent months, Sagan was well positioned in the closing stages of stage eight of the Vuelta a Espana before colliding with a motorbike. After launching a tirade of expletives and launching several kicks at the bike, he set off in pursuit of the disappearing peloton, with his heavily ripped shorts revealing several impressive bruises.

Alas, he was not able to re-join the leaders and was fined by the International Cycling Union for his outburst. His Tinkoff-Saxo team then announced his withdrawal from the race, reportedly threatening legal action.

"Sagan cannot safely continue," they said. "He was hit by a reckless auxiliary motorbike and suffered wounds and burns of first and second degree on the left side of his body, from the hip to the lower leg. In addition, he has a contusion on his left forearm with an intra-muscular haematoma.”

Reports have been mixed, with one headline describing the man in green as the “Incredible Sulk”, but most others have been more sympathetic, for such collisions are now happening far too often in cycling.

It got me thinking about other strange injuries in sport.

Just off the top of my head I can think of a few befallen friends at my local running club. One, who was perhaps in the wrong sport, was handicapped for two successive summers due to climbing-related injuries: one involving a tree to collect a ball and the other involving some sort of roof-jump at a party. Another ignored our coach’s pleas for him not to play other sports by breaking his leg in a rugby match while a third was overtaking a slower group in the dark on a training run, before tripping agonisingly after failing to spot a low railing.

There are many far more weird and wonderful examples than these in professional sport, and perhaps unsurprisingly given the idiocy of some of the actions involved, football has provided some of the best.

Some have involved celebrations, from Arsenal’s Steve Morrow breaking his collarbone falling off team mate Tony Adams’ shoulders following a goal in the 1993 League Cup Final, to physio Gary Lewin being stretchered off with a dislocated ankle after tripping over a water bottle after England scored in last summer’s FIFA World Cup match against Italy.

Top marks, however, to Queens Park Rangers midfielder Sandro, who injured his knee sliding to celebrate a rare goal he had scored…in training.

Being at home is almost as hazardous. Spanish goalkeeper Santiago Canizares was ruled out of the 2002 World Cup after stepping on a fragment of glass from a bottle of aftershave he had smashed, while West Ham United’s Enner Valencia cut his big toe “quite severely” with a broken teacup. Veteran defender Rio Ferdinand strained a tendon, well, doing nothing, stretching his legs which watching television, while my favourite case involves Glasgow Rangers’ Kirk Broadfoot, who was scalded by an exploding boiled egg he had put in the microwave.

Footballers from the past were not much better either, with cutting off a toe using a lawnmower and dislocating a jaw shouting at defenders two rather wonderful, if painful, cases.

Golf’s Rory McIlroy was ruled out of this year’s British Open after injuring his ankle in a “kickabout” with friends, while Belgian tennis star Kim Clijsters was similarly injured dancing at a friend’s wedding.

Cricket has provided two final examples. England’s Ben Stokes missed this year’s World Cup after coming a cropper punching a locker in frustration, while Australia’s Glenn McGrath was famously forced to miss two matches in the 2005 Ashes Series after tripping over a loose ball during a warm-up.

Sometimes illnesses and injuries are less freak and more avoidable - such as the latest infections sustained by sailors on the polluted waters of Guanabara Bay – but it is amazing, and in a weird way quite refreshing, that so many like these still happen in the professional world today.

And we can be thankful that Bolt, surely the greatest athlete on the planet who also escaped with nothing more than scratches after crashing his high-performance car in 2009, was miraculously not another addition in Beijing.