World Athletics: Olympians in Tokyo faced a “worrying” level of abuse on social media

Nearly three out of 20 athletes whose social media feeds were monitored in a study at the Tokyo Olympics were the subject of abusive posts, and women were attacked in more than 85 percent of those posts, according to results released on Thursday by the . published the global regulator of sport.

World Athletics released observations from more than 240,000 Twitter posts related to 161 athletes who competed in Tokyo earlier this year. Of these, 132 were classified as abusive and 65 percent of them were “severely abusive” according to the standards set in the study.

Of the 161 athletes whose accounts were monitored, 23 were victims of the abuse, and 16 of those 23 were women.

“This research is troubling in many ways, but what strikes me the most is that the abuse targets individuals who celebrate and share their accomplishments and talent in order to inspire and motivate people,” said Sebastian Coe, President of World Athletics in a press release.

The study found that 63 percent of identified abuse was directed against two athletes – both black and female – while the two most common categories of abuse were sexist (29 percent) and / or racist (26 percent) in nature.

US athletes were targeted in 89 percent of the racist attacks, even though they made up only 23 percent of the athletes studied.

“Growing evidence suggests that this is being driven by a huge rise in prejudice about race, gender and social status,” said Max Siegel, CEO of USA Track and Field, in the press release. “Simply put, this type of behavior is gross and totally unacceptable.”

The study follows the introduction of the World Athletics Safeguarding Policy, which the association called implementing a “process to protect vulnerable people, children and adults from harassment, abuse and exploitation” (and) creating a safe and welcoming environment in which everyone will respected and valued. “

In the press release containing the results of the social media study, World Athletics said the data was a basis “to work more closely with social media platforms to address this problem”.