The guy was holding a load of feces in his guts1. This happened in the middle of the race and guy was one of the top ten of the great runners of all time in history2. And what may seem rather anecdotical or exceptional was actually a result of what happens to a lot of people when they place themselves in extreme situations and there's an important nervous element in play. (I already saw other great sport people as Lionel Messi vomiting to the side of the field.) The stomach is a rather indomitable beast, almost whimsical-temperamental. Or perhaps it's one of the sane organ, which notices when enough is enough.
Anyway, what calls to my atention is this: the torso is a bodily space full of muscles and parts that are controlable/trainable; but at the same time it's resident of the most instinctive sensations, about gut feelings, where we don't exactly know what they are; but from which bad (or good, but always strong) feeling com from that side of the body. It happens when we're in love, or angry.
I once read in the header of a newspaper that "a second brain works in the stomach area and they say that it regulates emotions". And the news said something of the likes about the work of Michael Gershon, researcher at the University of Columbia:
known technically as enteric nervous system, the second brain is composed by layers of neurons located in the walls of the intestinal tube, which influences/affects our mood, character and even our sleep rythm[...] great part of the neurological power of the second brain concentrates in the rough daily duty of digestion.
It all happened because the guy wanted to consume the greatest amount possible of callories in a way he hadn't yet tried before. And that's what it's about, not only about the nervousness but mostly, the guy is a voracious experimenter.
With the guy I'm referring to Scott Jurek, and his trial and error of drinking oil as a fuel is his own narrative as he discribes it himself in his autobiographic book in 2012. It should suffice to say that he won 2 or 3 Spartathlons in a row, and he's also been a vegan for over 20 years. My interest was on how the guy trained, ate healthy and yummy, and none of this could avoid that he had trouble with his stomach.↩
Mentioning the top ten may sound a bitcheap as a major theme, but the idea is that several relevant persons from the field were surveyed and there was a certain agreement that there were 16 start of all times. Some are runners of short distance, like Usain Lightning Bolt, and others less known to the general public but very much relevant for the history of the sport such as Kenenisa Bekele, Jesse Owens and the winner of all time: Emil Zátopek. ↩