Olympics: Abuse leaves Rebecca Adlington ‘angry and frustrated’

Published on 04/06/2012 00:16

DOUBLE Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington has been receiving abusive messages on Twitter after revealing “nasty comments” meant she would be using it sparingly during the 2012 Olympics.

The 23-year-old was catapulted into the public eye after her Olympic triumphs in the 400 metres and 800m freestyle in Beijing, with the Mansfield-born athlete feted on her return to Great Britain. However, not everybody was so pleased for the Nova Centurion swimmer.

Now she does not read interviews she has given and won’t be using Twitter as much during the Games. Yesterday Adlington pasted a message that had been sent to her on Twitter, prefacing it with: “I had a perfect example of what has been said in the papers this week tweeted to me this morning. I apologise for the swearing when I RT it!”

She then posted: “How lovely is this person...” before retweeting a message to her which read: “@BeckAdlington you shark fin nosed d*******, you belong in that pool you f****** whale.”

Adlington quickly received support from many of her Great Britain team-mates including former world 100m freestyle silver medallist Fran Halsall who tweeted: “What a small insignificant life that person must lead”. His thoughts were echoed by former double Commonwealth champion Caitlin McClatchey, who wrote: “His parents must be so proud to have raised such a pathetic idiot! Well done for ur amazing 800 hun BOOM! Good luck today xx”

It all follows the revelation by Adlington to a number of reporters that she has been subject to abuse on Twitter as well as negative comments online. She explained: “I love the block button on Twitter. I don’t know how people expect to send a nasty comment and not get blocked. With Twitter I think it’s one of those things, if you like it like Liam (Tancock) who is on it every two minutes – ‘just having my lunch, just doing this’ – he loves it, he is like that in real life.

“Whereas I am on Twitter every now and again, I tweet here and there but not every day all the time.

“I think I will be going on it every now and again but I won’t be checking it. I want to stay focused – obviously the messages of support are absolutely amazing and I love reading those but you have got the chance of somebody saying something just to annoy you and I don’t want that added stress.”

She added: “I used to (read articles) when it first happened but I am one of those people who then scrolls down to the bottom and reads the comments. I learned very quickly not to do that because it is awful and I get angry: even if there are ten nice comments you always get one idiot. It makes you angry and frustrated.”