Harvard did not win either the men's or women's end of the Brown-Dartmouth home tri-meet Saturday at McCurdy Track, but almost no one seemed to care.

An early accident cast a pall over the afternoon's proceedings and made Dartmouth's win in the men's meet and Brown's in the women's--and Harvard's second-place finish to both--relatively inconsequential.

During the hammer throw, one of the visitors made a bad throw that would have been a foul, according to Harvard co-captain Joe Ciollo.

But the hammer hit a bystander, who fell to the ground and was taken to a hospital by ambulance.

"The chain part of the hammer hit his face, but the hammer hit him on the side, I think above the hips," senior T.K. Yang said. "It was going in slow motion. I heard people yell 'Watch out!' and saw the guy tumble down."

"I ducked but saw him falling," junior Kristy Johnson said. "I thought he might even be dead. I saw him go down, just drop. Blood was covering his face, so I stood there for two seconds and ran to get help.

She said that she thinks the man was an alumnus because he was there with another elderly-looking man and because so many former Harvard runners attend track meets.

Although Yang said the man was an official, Johnson and others disagreed.

The accident happened fairly early in the meet.

"Things like that characterized the day," co-captain Heather Hanson said. "We weren't focused on the whole team effort because of the accident, and some people were kind of shook up. The focus of the day became for us to try to get as good an effort as we could, get experience in the cold, and not worry about scores at all."

Dartmouth Men 89.5-Harvard 63-Brown52.5

The Big Green men won the javelin, 100-meter high hurdles, long jump, 1500-meter, hammer throw, and triple jump. They swept the 5000-meter and added seven other second-place finishes.

Ciollo led the Crimson with a Michael Johnson-like 200-and 400-meter double victory.

"I was happy with both of my races," he said. I think that a lot of the sprinting events, including my own, were affected by the strong headwind in the home stretch that was pretty much present all day. It was probably about 10 miles and hour. Both of my races weren't anything too exciting. I was able to win them both comfortably."

Harvard got three other first-place performances, including freshman Aaron Snead, who cleared 4.35 meters in the pole vault, senior Scott Muoio, who won the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 9:08.4, and sophomore John Kraay, who won the shotput with a throw of 15.70 meters. Sophomore Tarek Hamid won the discus with a throw of 48.00 meters, 16 centimeters ahead of second place.

"Muoio actually had an exceptional race in the steeplechase, where he was only 10 seconds off his personal best despite having bad weather and no one to run with for most of the race," Ciollo said "He's one of the best steeplechase runners in the East right now."