Tenista Katie Boulter has been the last athlete to denounce the abuses and threats they receive through social networks. The British player was sincere about this toxic practice, which affects not only athletes but also her family.
Boulter, 28, revealed messages and threats like someone asked him to buy “candles and a coffin for his whole family” With a reference to his grandmother's tomb if he has not died tomorrow. ” Other messages told him that “he went to hell” or that “hopefully giving you cancer.”
The tennis player, in statements to BBC Sport, said that “I wonder who is the person who sent that. I do not think it is something to say or my worst enemy. It's horrible, horrible to say something like that to anyone. It's horrible.”
This simply demonstrates how vulnerable we are. You really don't know if this person is in the place or not
Boulter believes that much of those harmful messages come from traigators who have lost money. He said he tries to deal with those threats, but they end up creating concern sometimes for their safety. “This simply demonstrates how vulnerable we are. You really don't know if this person is in the place. You really don't know if you are close or if you know where you live or something like that,” he explained.
The tennis players received 8,000 threats in 2024, 40 % of trainers
This research, conducted by artificial intelligence and human analysts, covers all players who have competed in the WTA and ITF circuit, that is, around 3,800 tennis players. Around 1.6 million publications were analyzed. It was detected that 458 players were subject to threats and that five of them received 26 % of the insults. The trainers were responsible for 40 % of the abusive messages. WTA offers a direct communication channel so that the players communicate these situations of abuse and inappropriate messages. In 2024, 28 players used this service to complain about 56 possible threats.
Numerous public complaints
It is not the first time that athletes denounce the messages of hatred and threats they receive through social networks. For example, the athlete Gabby Thomas, 200 meter Olympic champion, said that on one occasion a man followed her on the track And he insulted her while she signed autographs and then boasted of having bothered Thomas to not win the 200 meters, while publishing a video in which she was heard saying that “he was going to fall.”
For this reason, some federations, such as World Athletics, already studying this type of messages with the objective of identifying abusive behaviors against athletes on the Internet. Thus, after the 2023 Budapest World Cup, The radiography of these abuses talked about messages that were mostly performed on Twitter and their content was racist.
UEFA also launched measures against these 'online' abuse through a program called 'respect'. And Roland Garros already made the Bodyguard tool, which eliminated hate messages aimed at tennis players available to racket professionals during the two weeks that competed in the Internationals of France.
