Olympic swimmer hits back at online criticism
Double Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington who is from Mansfield, has been receiving abusive messages on Twitter after revealing "nasty comments" meant she would be using it sparingly during the 2012 Olympics.
The 23-year-old was catapulted into the public eye after her triumphs in the 400 metres and 800m freestyle in Beijing, with the athlete feted on her return to Great Britain.
However, not everybody was so pleased for the Nova Centurion swimmer - something she discovered the painful way. Now she does not read interviews she has given and neither will she be using Twitter as much during the Games.
Today Adlington pasted a message that has been sent to her on Twitter, prefacing it with: "I had a perfect example of what has been said in the papers this week tweeted to me this morning. I apologise for the swearing when I RT it!"
She then posted: "How lovely is this person..." before retweeting a message to her which read: "@BeckAdlington you shark fin nosed d,* you belong in that pool you f** whale."
Adlington quickly received support from many of her Great Britain team-mates.
Former world 100m freestyle silver medallist Fran Halsall tweeted: "what a small insignificant life that person must lead", echoed by former double Commonwealth champion Caitlin McClatchey, who wrote: "his parents must be so proud to have raised such a pathetic idiot! Well done for ur amazing 800 hun BOOM! Good luck today xx"
Olympic open water bronze medallist Cassie Patten addressed the perpetrator directly, saying: "It must be hard for you, you obviously have achieved nothing in your life, as you feel the need to Insult @BeckAdlington."
It all follows the revelation by Adlington to a number of reporters that she has been subject to abuse on Twitter as well as negative comments online.
She had said: "I love the block button on Twitter. "I don't know how people expect to send a nasty comment and not get blocked. "With Twitter I think it's one of those things if you like it like Liam (Tancock) who is on it every two minutes - 'just having my lunch, just doing this' - he loves it, he is like that in real life.
"Whereas I am on Twitter every now and again, I tweet here and there but not every day all the time. "I think I will be going on every now and again but I won't be checking it.
"I want to stay focused - obviously the messages of support are absolutely amazing and I love reading all of those but you have got the chance of somebody saying something just to annoy you and you don't want that added stress.
"For myself, I think I'll Tweet once it's over." She added: "I used to (read articles) when it first happened but I am one of those people I then scroll down to the bottom and read the comments and I learned very quickly not to do that. Because it is awful and I get angry: even ithere are 10 nice comments you always get one idiot.
"It makes you angry and frustrated. I've now given up because it upsets me or makes me angry."