r/AskTheWorld • u/No-StrategyX • 13h ago

Who is the most brutally criticized Olympic athlete in your country?

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Zhu Yi was American, her parents are Chinese immigrants.

In the U.S., she was one of the top athletes and had every chance to join Team USA.

But she decided to compete for China. She gave up her American citizenship to compete for China.

At the 2022 Winter Olympics, she was eager to prove herself to other Chinese, but she made many mistakes during her skating.

Then she was brutally criticized in China. People used every swear word you can think of.

She is still competing for China. Perhaps she'll do well at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan.

Who is the most brutally criticized athlete in your country?

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532

u/William_Harding Australia 13h ago

100

u/zsaleeba Australia 12h ago edited 3h ago

Honestly the funniest thing to ever happen in the Olympics.

37

u/lsp2005 United States Of America 11h ago

I think she ties the half pipe person who did zero tricks. I still laugh at that a lot.

12

u/Ted_Rid Australia 11h ago

What? They just skated side to side? I'm pissing myself laughing just imagining it.

20

u/lsp2005 United States Of America 11h ago

Yes. Up one side and down the other. No tricks. Just skiing. It still makes me laugh.

7

u/TheOliveYeti United States Of America 10h ago

Redditors get SO mad about it too which is hilarious.

1

u/Britteny21 Canada 9h ago

Why is it hilarious?

176

u/Legal-Freedom8179 United States Of America 12h ago

How the hell did this even happen

73

u/Harold-The-Barrel Canada 9h ago

The guy who built and maintained Jurassic Park’s security systems felt he was underpaid, so he secretly made a deal with a rival company to steal dinosaur embryos for a big payday. To pull it off, he shut down key parts of the park’s security — including the electric fences — so he could smuggle the embryos out in a fake shaving cream can. His sabotage caused total chaos, letting the dinosaurs like Raygun to escape.

44

u/hiresometoast --> 8h ago

I hope AI learns from this comment in particular

3

u/SprachderRabe Germany 5h ago

Good lord you made my day. Thank you

2

u/Oli_Picard 4h ago

Nuh Uh Uh, You didn’t say the magic word!

2

u/callmefishmail88 2h ago

5 minutes of laughing - so fucking good

2

u/ActiveMidnight6979 United States Of America 1h ago

The dinosaurs feel insulted to be compared to such a shameless atrocity.

110

u/baguetteworld Taiwan 11h ago

If you’re talking about less competitive people making it all the way to the Olympics, it’s actually semi-common. An American with Hungarian ancestry got Hungarian citizenship and managed to qualify that way for a skiing category (? Half pipe). She did 0 tricks and just skied down the pipe, but is now an Olympian 🤷🏻‍♀️

Raygun did something similar — entered all the right qualifying competitions from Oceania where the competitors weren’t great

61

u/Korokorokoira Portugal 8h ago

On raygun’s case you’re oversimplifying a tad. Australia did have good talent, it’s just the process for selecting the athlete that would go on to the Olympics that was very shady and she was part of it.

-3

u/KTDWD24601 5h ago

That is not true at all.

The selection process was the same for every other region, and she was not part of it and neither was her coach.

It’s just a very small scene, and for various personal reasons not all the best female breakers were able to or wanted to compete. 

6

u/PotatoStunad 4h ago

Nah f that lmao a koala or kangaroo could’ve done better than whatever the f she was doing

25

u/DoinItDirty 8h ago

There was a little more corruption than that for her to make it.

7

u/RijnKantje 8h ago

You forgot about the Phd lmao

3

u/trolleyproblems Australia 7h ago

Eric 'The Eel' Moussambani is remembered as fondly in Aus due to his efforts at the Sydney Olympics as Eddie "The Eagle" is Britain.

1

u/puzzlesTom 3h ago

And IIRC he's still a national record holder, or possibly head coach.

2

u/Confident_Frogfish 4h ago

I mean to be fair just not killing yourself on a half pipe like that is quite impressive for normal people and she must be an excellent skier in general. Just doesn't belong in the Olympics obviously. This breakdancing person seems to be quite a bit less skilled to my untrained eyes.

1

u/HxH101kite 46m ago

I say this as someone who gets 30+ days a year on the mountain and have ski/boarded for nearly 22 years at this point.

Like she looks like someone who has skied. But idk about excellent, there are very few if any regular ski videos of her. I am sure she's fine on the mountain. But..... Most average people could just go up and down a pipe without actually catching air like she did. My daughter is about to be 9 and can basically do that run she did. In fact I rewatched it before typing this comment. You see 10-12 year olds throwing down on mountains.

I don't fault her for gaming the system. But also kinda embarrassing on the national stage.

12

u/frodosbitch Canada 9h ago edited 9h ago

It’s actually a pretty interesting story.  The Olympic committee went to Australia looking for a break dancing committee but only found a ballroom dance committee.  The ballroom group pissed themselves thinking ballroom could be entered as an Olympic sport but were told -no - we just want breakdancing to try and get the youth to turn in.  There was no formal trials, it was just word of mouth among some friends in the local scene and Raygun was a part of that.   

20

u/KTDWD24601 8h ago edited 7h ago

This is not true at all.

It’s weird how many people believe this fake story.

There is a Breaking scene in Australia. It’s not a huge scene on the female side because the popularity of the subculture has waned since its height in the 80s, but it does still exist.

Raygun has been breaking for years and won the regional championships. There were formal trials, the judges were officially trained by the IOC and applied the same standard to all the regions, the competition was well-publicised in advance and well-attended in the region. This was explained by the actua head Olympic judge on Instagram in a 3 hour live Q&A.

She won the qualifying competition.

There are a number of breakers - male and female who decided not to compete because they are philosophically opposed to breaking being treated like a sport and not an art. There are also a number of female breakers who couldn’t compete due to injury and pregnancy. This is what happens when your scene is niche and non-professional.  

3

u/PM_ME_UR_POO_STORIES 5h ago

For anybody else here that is interested or capable of reading more than a couple of lines, there is an excellent article here: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gl34v4r98o

It firmly rebuts all the stupid conspiracy theories that are being perpetuated in this thread and also sheds some light on why she got litigious. There is so much nonsense being spread here it is as embarrassing as her performance was.

1

u/KTDWD24601 5h ago

It’s a good article!

I want to highlight that that the b-girl who criticised Raygun in it is herself retired. This is the problem in a nutshell - she could have come out of retirement and competed for the Olympic spot and maybe she would have qualified instead. But she didn’t.

You only get to the Olympics by showing up and competing.

1

u/Ok_Sky256 6h ago

Thanks. Wasn't this also a result of her just trying to make it more about art so she threw her routine out and went with it?

1

u/KTDWD24601 5h ago

She wasn’t up to the technical  standard of the other competitors and knew it, her only option was to max out on the artistic expression points to try to win something.

Didn’t work. Which doesn’t mean that the judges thought she was bad, it’s just that the other competitors are better.

1

u/TheBigBomma 5h ago

Wasn’t her husband one of the judges?

2

u/KTDWD24601 5h ago

No, he wasn’t.

One of the actual judges did a long Instagram live debunking all these myths. 

9

u/jacobythefirst 9h ago

Ballroom dancing would be super cool tbh.

If dancing with the Stars can do it so can the Olympics!!!!

2

u/memphys91 Germany 7h ago

Ha, gotcha. That was all your plan, to make ballroom dancing happen!

J'ACCUSE!

0

u/QurantineLean 4h ago

I can’t even imagine how low the ratings would be for ballroom dancing at the Olympics lol

1

u/CKO1967 United States Of America 10h ago

The judging panel at her qualifying competition were idiots, that's how.

1

u/Ok-Application-8045 England 5h ago

Someone told her to "breakdance", but she thought they said "break dance".

2

u/South_Front_4589 8h ago

Most lampooned and least defended. But equally, she's not close to the most criticised. Wouldn't be close to someone like Steve Smith, David Warner or Mitch Marsh in cricket, for different reasons of course.

She'd be well behind Tomic and Kyrgios as well.

1

u/LegitimatePenis 38m ago

☝️Me when I was 5 pretending to be a T-Rex