Ethiopian Olympic swimmer Robel
Kiros Habt was being branded a "whale" following his poor performance
at the Rio Games and his extra weight. He finished last in the
Preliminary Men’s 100m Freestyle heats at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium.
The 24 year old was the only one of the 59 entrants in the heats not
to complete the distance in under a minute. He was ranked 59th with a
time of 1 minute 4.95 seconds.
Viewers
made fun of the Ethiopian athlete’s body shape and compared it to his
competitors. Some were particularly harsh in their commentary by dubbing
him a "whale" and "fat". Media reports referred to him as "tubby,
"chubby" and "overweight". The Daily Mail even invited
readers to "meet Robel the whale"
The Ethiopia-based university student, whose entry for Rio was secured on a
special invitation from world body FINA (International Swimming
Federation) extended to athletes from under-represented countries, on Wednesday spoke about how the criticism had affected him.
"It has been difficult," he told the Daily Mail. "Too
difficult, I don’t know how I feel, but many things. Some of the things
people have said or written are not nice. I am a nice person, I would
not say these things about others. They
have used dirty language against me and called me fat and a big man and a
whale," he said.
Habte, who says he is now retiring from Olympic swimming, told Daily
Mail that he had put on weight after a car accident forced him to break
from
his training schedule. The swimmer, who now weighs 179lb, also said he
had expected to finish in last place having never trained in an
Olympic-sized pool
Prior to the Olympics Habte’s best time was 59.9 seconds.
According to the Telegraph, "It may be some time before Habte is described as ‘sculpted’ or
‘chiselled’, and he has no plans on competing again, but he will always
be an Olympian. For him, Rio was never about the winning, only the
taking part
"I am so happy because it is my first competition in the Olympics… I
wanted to do something different for my country, that’s why I chose
swimming. Everybody, every day you wake up in Ethiopia, you run. Not
swimming. But I didn’t want to run; I wanted to be a swimmer."
No comments:
Post a Comment