Published on Monday 4 June 2012 10:55
DOUBLE Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington has been receiving abusive messages on Twitter, apparently from a Leeds student.
The 23-year-old was catapulted into the public eye after her 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.
Yesterday Adlington posted a message that has 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.?
Today it was reported that the message, which was signed @CallumAspley, had been traced to a 19-year-old student at Leeds Metropolitan Universiry who is himself a keen sportsman. He in turn blamed one of his friends for sending it at 11 o?clock on Saturday night.
Adlington quickly received support from many of her Great Britain team-mates.
Former world 100m freestyle silver medallist Fran Halsall tweeted: ?what a small insignificant life that person must lead?, 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?
Olympic open water bronze medallist Cassie Patten addressed the perpetrator directly, saying: ?It must be hard for you, you obviously have achieved nothing in your life, as you feel the need to Insult @BeckAdlington.?
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 had said: ?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 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 all of those but you have got the chance of somebody saying something just to annoy you and you don?t want that added stress.
?For myself, I think I?ll Tweet once it?s over.??
She added: ?I used to (read articles) when it first happened but I am one of those people I then scroll down to the bottom and read the comments and I learned very quickly not to do that. Because it is awful and I get angry: even if there are 10 nice comments you always get one idiot.
?It makes you angry and frustrated. I?ve now given up because it upsets me or makes me angry.?
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