{"id":308069,"date":"2026-02-20T13:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T13:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/308069\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T13:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T13:32:08","slug":"uk-athletics-admits-guilt-over-death-of-paralympian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/308069\/","title":{"rendered":"UK Athletics admits guilt over death of Paralympian"},"content":{"rendered":"

UK Athletics has pleaded guilty to the corporate manslaughter of a Paralympian who was hit on the head by a metal pole during training.<\/p>\n

Abdullah Hayayei, 36, who represented the United Arab Emirates, was fatally injured at Newham Leisure Centre in east London on 11 July 2017.<\/p>\n

He was preparing to represent his country in the F34 class discus, javelin and shot put at the World Para Athletics Championships in London when part of a throwing cage fell on him.<\/p>\n

UK Athletics Ltd admitted corporate manslaughter today, having previously denied the charge.<\/p>\n

The charge said the national governing body for athletics caused the death of Mr Hayayei by “supplying for use at an organised para-athletics training event in which he participated a discus\/shot put cage which it used and operated without its base structure and which collapsed” into the Paralympian while he was practising shot putting.<\/p>\n

UK Athletics had previously denied a lesser alternative health and safety offence.<\/p>\n

\"Keith
\nKeith Davies was head of sport for the 2017 World-Paralympic Athletics Championships<\/p>\n

Keith Davies, 78, who was head of sport for the 2017 World Paralympic Athletics Championships, had denied gross negligence manslaughter.<\/p>\n

Davies, of east London, has now pleaded guilty to a health and safety charge.<\/p>\n

The fresh pleas were entered at an Old Bailey hearing before Judge Mark Lucraft KC.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Karen Robinson invited the court to set a two-day sentencing hearing in early June.<\/p>\n

She confirmed the prosecution would not seek a trial and the outstanding charges would be dealt with at the conclusion of the sentencing.<\/p>\n

Davies was granted continued bail on the condition he liaise with the Probation Service for a pre-sentence report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK Athletics has pleaded guilty to the corporate manslaughter of a Paralympian who was hit on the head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-308069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}