Sprinting medal hero Rhasidat Adeleke was 'in a dark place' after trolls targeted her with vile racist slurs
The 21-year-old, who won three medals at the European Championships, was reduced to tears reading the posts about her online
Sprinting medal hero Rhasidat Adeleke was “in a dark place” after trolls targeted her with vile racist slurs after her success in Rome.
The 21-year-old, who won three medals at the European Championships, was reduced to tears reading the posts about her online. Her coach Edrick Floreal revealed the athlete, from Tallaght in Dublin, was badly affected by the toxic messages.
Adeleke won mixed 4x400m relay gold, women’s 4x400m relay silver and individual 400m silver during a triumphant week for Irish athletes in Italy.
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Floreal told Dublin’s FM104: “There’s some negative stuff said... and it really affected her, that her own people said negative things about her being an Irishwoman or not.
“I think that’s probably the most pain I’ve seen her have. She was really in a dark place when she read those things on the internet. She doesn’t ever cry, so when she cries it’s like ‘oh my God’, so that bothered her more than I ever thought and I just let her handle it.”
On Friday some of the Rome medal winners met Taoiseach Simon Harris, but Adeleke was not among them. Floreal said of the online attacks: “I told her, ‘this is part of the deal, being who you are, attracting the attention you are attracting, that’s part of the deal.
“‘It comes with the territory, you can’t have one without the other and you’re going to have to accept it for what it is and deal with it and continue to train and perform’.
“That’s probably the worst I’ve seen her as far as really feeling down on herself because of those things that were said on the internet.”
Adeleke is aiming for Olympic gold in the 400m in Paris after coming in second to Poland’s Natalia Kaczmarek in Rome.
After the race, she said: “When I crossed the line and realised I came second, I was a bit devastated. But as my coach said, we’ve been training through this competition, so to come out here and run a PB, I’m really excited.
“Whatever we can do here, we’ll do, but we’ve been training and are going to continue training really hard for the next couple of weeks and hopefully when it comes time for Paris, I’ll be where I need to be.”
Mr Harris sent a message of support to the athlete on X urging her not to let “online cowards” affect her. He wrote: “You are Ireland and Ireland could not be more proud of you.”
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