They Shouldn’t Kick Athletes Out Of The Olympics For Tweeting

03 Aug, 2012 by John Hawkins

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Olympic athletes go through daily routines that most people can’t even imagine. They eat the healthiest food, get the toughest coaching, spend hours working out — and they do this for years on end just to prepare for their chance to win a medal for their country.

Once an athlete gets the nod to compete in the Olympics, there are very, very few circumstances where that opportunity should be taken away from them. Unless they cheat, shoot one of the decathletes in the face, or do something roughly equivalent, nobody should prevent them from competing.

Certainly, there’s almost nothing that they can say on Twitter that should cost them that opportunity. Yet, there have been not one, but two athletes who lost opportunities to compete over tweets, one of which, could be called barely offensive at worst.

Voula Papachristou tweeted, “With so many Africans in Greece, the West Nile mosquitoes will be getting home food!!!”

This led to a bunch of bureaucrats sitting on their behinds in Greece kicking her off the team for being “racist.” Granted, that’s not the most sensitive thing in the world to say, but it’s not racist or even hateful. Hell, it’s not even all that edgy. Watch Comedy Central for an hour in prime time on any given night and you’ll probably see a dozen jokes that are more offensive than that.

Swiss soccer player Michel Morganella also got the boot for making “racist” comments about South Korea after his team lost 2-1.

Translated from French, Morganella’s tweet said he wanted to beat up South Koreans, that they should “burn” and that they were a “bunch of mongoloids.”

That’s not racist in any meaningful sense. It’s just some athlete who lost, was taunted on Twitter, and immaturely shot off his mouth in response. It would be one thing to tell Morganella to apologize and stop tweeting, but to kick him out for that? It’s ridiculous.

At the end of the day, it’s just Twitter. No actual West Africans or South Koreans were harmed during the Tweeting. If Olympic athletes make stupid comments, they deserve whatever criticism comes their way, but “political correctness” shouldn’t be treated like an Olympic sport.

Hat tip to my buddy Katrina Rice for give me this idea.