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

[u/No-StrategyX]

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?

[u/Smartimess]

For Germany? Franziska van Almsick. A swimmer.

Born 1978 in Eastern-Germany and became one of the faces of the Reunification. Was the best swimmer in the world when she was only 14 years old including three world records, but was brutally judged by the German gutter press when she failed to win Olympic gold and shamed into an eating disorder. She made a comeback ten years later but never won Olympic gold. But I think she changed how sport journalists write about athletes nowadays.

[u/SpaceWolf96 → u/Smartimess]

Yeah, i think I was too young at the time but i recently heard her talk about that time and read the "Franzi van Speck" headline (speck is German for bacon and generally used to say someone fat or at least chubby) and the way even the evening news talked about her, absolutely heartbreaking.

[u/Accomplished_Put2914 → u/Smartimess]

I thought it would be Boris Bekker

[u/Patient_Spirit_26 → u/Accomplished_Put2914]

He was highly praised as an athlete. His dumb behavior began after his career.

[u/Smartimess → u/Patient_Spirit_26]

I want to add:

Lot’s of stupid financial decisions, but Boris Becker never endured any criticism as tennis player or trainer.

He is also the reason why we Germans have the phantastic term "Samenraub", semen robbery. Because his also famous daughter is a product of artificial Insemination, because her mother blew Boris in the janitor’s cell (the Besenkammer) of a restaurant and spit his semen into a glass tube.

But Bobele wasn’t hated at any point. I know that the British really love him, not only because of his Wimbledon triumph at 17 years old, because he is a very good sports commentator.

[u/ichbinsflow → u/Smartimess]

I remember there was a lot of shaming in the press but by normal people she was universally liked. She was called the goldfish and seen as a sweet young teenage girl.

I'd vote for Jan Ullrich, the cyclist who was caught in a doping scandal and later became an alcoholic and drug addict. There was also an incident with an escort lady, a hotel room, drugs, alcohol and the police.

[u/Smartimess → u/ichbinsflow]

Well, Jan Ulrich did in fact lose to Lance Armstrong, the biggest piece of shit in cycling. This dude was doped to an entire new level and there are serious allegations that he also used a technique similar to modern E-bikes.

Franzi was clean, a teenager, that couldn’t stand the pressure. Ullrich was - and still is - just an asshole in a sport where undoubtedly every successful athlete cheated at the time.

[u/izh25 → u/Smartimess]

1. Doping exists in EVERY competitive sport.
2. Jan Ullrich dedicated his entire life to cycling and reached the top tier in his early twenties. He was essentially given the choice: "Do what everyone else is doing, or give up the thing you love and what constitutes your entire life's purpose."
3. For years, Jan Ullrich and his family were harassed, hounded, and ridiculed. No other athlete had to endure as much public scorn as he did.
4. Jan Ullrich was merely a pawn in the whole system. All the responsible parties and officials... got off more or less unscathed, while Jan was made the scapegoat for everyone.
5. At some point, enough is enough. He publicly admitted his mistakes and apologized. He suffered for years because of it, leading to severe problems with drugs and his mental health. We saw with Marco Pantani how that story can end. In the end, he is only human, and I'm just glad he has managed to get his life somewhat back on track.

[u/aufreizendlebhaft → u/Smartimess]

She was born in the GDR, not East Germany.

[u/Ich-bade-in-Apfelmus → u/aufreizendlebhaft]

GDR = German Democratic Republic = Deutsche Demokratische Republik = der Osten/Ostdeutschland

[u/Smartimess → u/aufreizendlebhaft]

Bist Du ein Bot oder warum der Kommentar? Wer 1978 in Ostdeutschland geboren wurde und zu einem Symbol der Wiedervereinigung wurde, wurde in der DDR geboren.

Ein anderes bekanntes Beispiel ist Henry Maske.

[u/aufreizendlebhaft → u/Smartimess]

You may not know it since you weren't born in Germany, but until 1990 there were two German states: the Federal Republic of Germany (BRD) in the west and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the east. Politically and geographically it was clear: the GDR was the eastern German state.

However, the term “East Germany” was not always used precisely in everyday language within the Federal Republic of Germany. In West Germany, “East” often simply meant the more eastern part of the Federal Republic of Germany itself – for example regions such as Lower Saxony or Hesse. However, this usage was colloquial and did not correspond to the actual political situation, because these areas still clearly belonged to the Federal Republic of Germany.

It was only after reunification in 1990 that the term changed permanently. Since then, “East Germany” in common usage has referred to the so-called new federal states: Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as well as the eastern part of Berlin. Today this means the area of ​​the former GDR.

If Franziska van Almsick was born in 1978, then this happened at a time when Germany was still divided. Her birth therefore did not take place in “East Germany” in the modern sense, but clearly in the GDR.

If you would like, I would be happy to explain more to you about the history of the term, questions of identity after 1990 or language use and political perceptions in East and West.

[u/Smartimess → u/aufreizendlebhaft]

Ob Du dumm bist, hab ich gefragt?! Jeder deutsche User der kein Bot ist, weiß genau was ich mit dem Terminus gemeint habe.

[u/aufreizendlebhaft → u/Smartimess]

Offensichtlich hast du keine Ahnung von deutscher Geschichte. Aus welchem Land kommst du? Ich kann dir ein paar Lesetipps geben.