Internet Trolls Body-Shame Male Swimmer At Summer Games

"I wanted to be a swimmer. It didn’t matter where I finished,” says 24-year-old Robel Kiros Habte of Ethiopia.
From: NewNowNext

 The 2016 Summer Games in Rio might go down as the thirstiest on record, with millions examining every perfect angle of the amazing athletes.

But one Olympian received unwarranted shade for having a body that (gasp!) may not look like it was chiseled from marble.

 Robel Kiros Habte of Ethiopia came in last during the men’s 100-meter freestyle on Tuesday, but the venom on the Internet wasn’t aimed at his performance.

Ethiopian swimmer Robel Kiros Habte shows off his freestyle ‘dad bod’ https://t.co/xVdYPAUeSR #Rio2016 pic.twitter.com/oJUzXkCY57

— The Sun (@TheSun) August 10, 2016

The Daily Record called Habte “tubby” in a headline, while an Ethiopian news site called him “out of shape,” and others nicknamed him “Robel the Whale.”

Habte is 5″ 9 and 179 pounds—maybe not on par with Ryan Lochte, who is 6’2″ 194 pounds, but certainly no slouch.

Let's just stick with running folks pic.twitter.com/R1CLfsDbOx

— Alicha Keys (@BunaTime) August 9, 2016

Can you imagine these comments aimed at a female swimmer?

Ethiopia is known for having world-class runners, but Habte, whose father is president of Ethiopia’s swimming federation, wanted to blaze a different trail.

“I wanted to do something different for my country, that’s why I chose swimming,” the 24-year-old college student told Reuters. “Everybody, every day you wake up in Ethiopia, you run… But I didn’t want to run, I wanted to be a swimmer. It didn’t matter where I finished.”

Olympics fans might remember Equatorial Guinea swimmer Eric “the Eel” Moussambani, who took 1min 52.72sec to complete the same 100m freestyle at the Sydney Games in 2000—nearly 50 seconds longer than Habte.