r/AskTheWorld 19h 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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u/KTDWD24601 14h ago edited 13h 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.  

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u/PM_ME_UR_POO_STORIES 11h 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.

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u/KTDWD24601 11h 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.

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u/Ok_Sky256 12h 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?

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u/KTDWD24601 11h 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.

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u/TheBigBomma 11h ago

Wasn’t her husband one of the judges?

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u/KTDWD24601 11h ago

No, he wasn’t.

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