No you didn't misread the sports mentioned in the heading there. The unfortunate Salim Sdiri, a French long jumper was competing at the IAAF Golden League games 2007 in Rome, when he was the victim of arguably the most cartoonish and simultaneously most lucky and unlucky sporting injury of all time. He was struck by a javelin thrown by Tero Pitkamaki, who had slipped during his throw. Naturally, the whole thing was captured on TV, which is lucky, because the average person would probably call you an idiot for telling them such a thing. Sdiri wasn't competing at the time (which is almost a shame, given how far he could have traveled if struck whilst jumping), but was warming up with the rest of the jumpers when the slip happened. The javelin, which, if you remember, is an 8ft spear, embedded itself into Sdiri's side, grazing his kidney and leaving a hole in his liver. It's nothing short of a miracle that the man escaped serious injury, given the power behind the throw and the locality of several pretty important organs to the wound. What's equally as frightening is that the head of another of the jumpers is merely inches away from where Sdiri was struck, which would have been an entirely different outcome. Sdiri was able to make a full recovery and is still competing to date.
