The joy of sports is something that is near and dear for me and sports is one of the only things in this world that gives me true happiness and that I have a passion for. So, when I need to witness things in sports such as athletes dealing with mental illness and idiot fans taking advantage of athletes, it really makes me cringe.
Athletes are people just like us. They have feelings and do not feel good when. you heckle them and if that is not enough there are those people that go the extra mile to make athletes feel miserable. Chloe Kim dealt with people harassing her on social media and when she went to school for a year and all she wanted to do was be a regular human being. She accomplished something amazing in her life by winning a gold people at the 2018 Olympics and a lot of that was taken away because of a few people that had nothing better to do.
Eileen Gu dealt with the same nonsense in this year's Olympics and I am so proud of how she dealt with her haters. Essentially, they were questioning her choice to represent her native China instead of the U.S.A and seriously, with all the bullshit that has been going on with the U.S.A the past couple of years, if I had the choice to represent any other country on a global platform, I sure as hell would! So good for her!
Eileen Gu was extremely successful during her first Olympic Games and won two gold medals and a silver and wowed the crowd whenever she hit the snow. I managed to watch a couple of her prime time events and she was very impressive, but what stood out more for me was how handled her critics.
She speaks with a lot of poise for a teenager and will be a role model for all females that strive to be the best at what they do and she most definitely put her sport on the map in the same way that Chloe did. Girl power!
On the other side of the spectrum there is Naomi Osaka. She is a former champion and used to be someone that oozed with confidence and spoke her mind so freely and embodied everything what a female role model should be. However, over the past several years her career has been going in a downward spiral both professionally and emotionally.
It has gotten so bad for her that she can not handle any sort of negative attention and it has gotten to the point that she can not deal with the press anymore. The role of the press is to ask the tough questions, but they are on pins and needles trying to prevent her from not having another mental breakdown.
In her case it is not a matter of fans being jerks and acting out of turn. It is Naomi herself being unable to deal with her demons and my advice to her is to take a step back from tennis until she is ready to face the world again. Everyone has had a tough time with the way the world is right now, but it seems that Naomi's entire world has been tearing down to pieces and it is up to her to build it back up again. I am a huge fan of hers and I hope that she is able to go back to her dominating form, but first and foremost I hope she is able to heal herself mentally and enter into a world where she is happy again.
Sports fans have access to a lot of things and are able to say pretty much anything we want. As a huge sports fan over the past 3 decades I have seen a lot of things but is over the past couple of years where the world is at its worst since I have been living in it where things have taken a major turn for the worse. When it rains it pours I guess?
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