WA studied online abuse of athletes at the Paris Olympics and the good news is it's a very small problem. Only 0.2% of all posts - basically 1 out of 440 - were found to be abusive.
That being said, 49% abuse went to Americans and it says 2 athletes received 82% of all abuse.
Does anyone know who those two were? Based on statistics, it seems like at least one has to be an American.
Here you have to think about people where the news media ran stories about them constantly, and they had to be negative, depending on your perspective, so I expect that it was the Dutch beach volleyball player, for raping a 12 year old, and the Algerian male or intersex athlete competing in women's boxing.
If limited to track, then two of Lyles, Sha'carri, Syd, and Athing, if she counts as a target while not even being there.
It is limited to track and field. And the numbers imply 1 American, and 1 not American, and doping barely matters. See bottom of article ("Categories of abuse"):
Unlike Lyles, Sha'carri might attract abuse in (general + ) racism + sexist + sexual + homophobia (?) + doping. I bet she's much better known as a 100/200 m runner than Syd.
82% of the abuse being directed at two athletes is crazy, especially if 49% was at US athletes (which I'd say isn't too unexpected given they're talking about Instagram, X, Facebook and TikTok - I'd expect it to be a relatively large figure given usage). Say 20% went at 'other' US athletes, 29% at one US athlete then that leaves 53% solely at one athlete. If more than 20% went to 'other' US athletes then that sole one non-US athlete gets an even higher figure.
Now that we're talking about the specifics (i.e. Aussie "break dancer" and Algerian "female boxer"), I'm remembering that some of the abuse was justified.
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