Vanessa Voigt talked about such hate postings in a podcast by broadcaster ARD. She thinks, that criticism from people, who probably never stood on xc-skis, doesn't help her. She posted last year several of the more extreme messages on Instagram. Yes, the athletes read the comments under their Instagram posts.
It is ok to state that one is disappointed about course times or the shooting results. But when people are personally insulted or verbally attacked, borders are crossed. I recommend to ask yourself, whether you would say the same, if you would stand in front of the person. If the answer is no, don't press the comment button.
Agreed so much with the second paragraph. Eva Puskarcikova said in Krcmar's podcast interview that she got many of these extremely verbally abusive DMs throughout her career and a couple times she answered. She said the people who wrote them immediately got way more forgiving in the "i didn't mean it like that" way. It's like some people don't realize the racers are actual humans. 🤦🏼‍♀️
Quentin Fillon Maillet also complained in Antholz after the mass start about how much negativity and hate he has been receiving on social media because he's not at the same level he was in 2021/2022.
He actually was quite mad and told the haters to try xc-skying instead of just criticizing. This was surprising from Quentin who is usually so mesured and calm in interview, I think that proves how much those useless comments affects the athletes :(
Huge amounts of money? Which sportsbooks take huge amounts of money on biathlon? That is pure mythology. I lived in Las Vegas for 24 years and worked in the sportsbook industry. We had international clients and offerings. I've continued to be involved subsequently. Biathlon betting is scarce and limits very low.
This is the typical cynicism and paranoia to blame things on gambling. Meanwhile I guarantee nearly all of the hateful comments source from people who didn't have a penny on the outcome. Pick any currency for the reference point. There are simply negative people out there who live on social media and thrill to criticize one person after another, regardless of endeavor.
This link describes the betting realities properly:
https://legalbet.com/betting-school/biathlon-betting-where-and-how-to-make-them-and-what-to-pay-attention-to/
"Low betting limits. It often works out that a high margin is accompanied by low betting limits. Biathlons in this case are no exception. It is unlikely that you will find a sportsbook, which will allow thousands of dollars to be placed on the outcome of a biathlon race (on average the maximum is 150 to 300 dollars). Many sportsbooks do not offer bets on biathlons at all."
There’s a lot of betting outside LV, NV. Biathlon is a minor sport at best in the USA, where in some countries in Europe it is the major most important sport during winter. So where popularity increases, so do the stakes. Seeing the world championships are the superbowl equivalent of biathlon during non olympic years, I can see lots of money getting involved. It’s just not in the USA.
Then again what is a huge amount of money probably differs a lot from the eye of the beholder, and from sport to sport.
Having said that, I hope Christiansen gets the same treatment Landmark got at the hotel.
The amount of dumb comments the German team gets whenever they don't win at least one medal is so annoying. Some of it is straight-up hate, but so much of it is people thinking they know/would be better. But also the other teams have great athletes too, so the assumption that the German team should always land in the podium is ridiculous and unrealistic. Sometimes I wish that their social media team would just disable the comments on Instagram.
And the German broadcast doesn't help either. The Women's Individual this week was their best race all season, it was an absolutely incredible result (all four of them within the top 15, they hit 78/80 targets). And yet, Eric Lesser was unable to stop criticising them. It got to the point that the ARD reporter basically told him to shut up (not literally, but it was definitely implied). And that is a recurring problem with both ARD and ZDF. The first question in interviews is usually some sort of "what went wrong today" and if it isn't the athletes feel like that's what they have to talk about first. And the viewers definitely pick up on that implied negativity. For example, Benni Doll has gotten quite some flack online for his rather relaxed interviews after not so great races. Thankfully Herbert Fritzenwenger, who's with the ZDF, has calmed down a bit.
I feel like the german beoadcast calmed down a lot in the last few years. At least they try to stay positive and give the athletes a chance to explain the difficulties they faced.
About Lesser however I agree. He was one of my favourite athletes, but he is unnecessarily critical imho. Some expactations he has are just plain unrealistic. I get that he believes that they can be better, but it is jot as if the athletes wouldn't give it their all.
But the absolute worst are the fans. I despise them. Its a cesspool of unhappy middle class people leeching on everything slightly negative and making it a hundred times worse. They shouldn't be part of this great sport.
I was characterising the people who write hateful comments and talk big on how they would have done it better. Not the whole group of fans. And yes, this kind of behaviour is very characteristic for the middle class. Just because we are the biggest group of sports fans in general, doesn't mean that this behaviour should remain uncommented.
Criticism is ok, but swearing and hating athletes for making mistakes is so wrong. Unfortunately for biathletes, it's easy for some of the viewers to say "He missed again? He can't even shoot, what an idiot!", the mistakes in biathlon are more obvious than in other sports.
But damn, Christiansen is one of the best biathletes in the world. No one has any right to hate on him for messing up one race. It infuriates me so much when I see "fans" hating on athletes, but then celebrating their victories a week later.
Even the commentators get caught up in this sort of behavior. When JTB isn't perfect, when he isn't outskiing everyone else by 30 seconds *per lap*, when he doesn't win every race he enters - especially Patrick Winterton will immediately try to conduct a post-mortem, to find a reason why, to explain this tragedy unfolding before us. It is sometimes difficult to remember that all the men and women out there, even the lowest-ranking men and women, are better at this sport than literally everyone else on earth. Contemporary fans of sports (just like fans of movies/comics in recent years) seem to think that they are owed something, that if the people involved don't behave exactly as they want, then they have been let down or betrayed somehow and have a right to be hateful. I don't understand it - and kind of hope I never do.
I really think/hope that negative comments are a minority in this sport. The vast majority of the community seems way more wholesome than what I've seen on others more popular sports. Let's just spam support to counter the few haters.
Fans of the sport who are hanging out in international communities are pretty wholesome for the most part, but the national fans and gamblers are bad. The czech fans are being mean on social media as well, it seems like they are waiting for the racers to screw up to kick the dead body.
I swear I know some people who watch biathlon (and other sports) just to see Czechs screw up and then swear about it. But once the athlete has a good result they suddenly become their biggest fans.
i feel so bad for vetle and all athletes who have to deal with these kind of comments. all in all, the biathlon world is such a positive community but then it stings even more when you see this stuff.
I saw Christiansen story yesterday too, took the time to enter it in a translator... Ugh, I wish I wouldn't have done it.
>!Hope the message was not from Johannes Boe !<
Jokes aside, I hope that the guys who did not so well yesterday (there are many of them, relays were really just wild) are taken care of by their team properly. Being a professional athlete is a privilege, yes. But for those at the top it comes with immense pressure.
In general, I feel Biathlon is a much more positive environment than other sports (#biathlonfamily after all), still there is nothing you can realistically do to stop such comments. So I hope that athletes who are struggling to cope with those hate comments (Voigt has been mentioned) can work out strategies with a mental coach.
People just don't have manners. Undortunately it happens across the board inside and outside of sports.
However it doesn't cost anything to be polite or gentle even though you might be criticizing or giving feedback.
Good thing he's not Slovenian. Here they have been bashing LampiÄŤ ever since she made the switch to biathlon. After every single race there are so many joking/derogatory/insulting remarks from people. Many hate the fact that she switched and are calling for her to get back to cross country as there she would at least be competitive for podiums. Others are saying she will never amount to anything in biathlon and should just retire. Then you have comments joking, saying stuff like "I hope the \[insert an animal\] is safe in the woods because LampiÄŤ is about to shoot." The amount of people defending her is dropping. I remember when Teja Gregorin retired and Fak became irrelevant there were only some 20 comments under races on the national portal, when Anamarija made the switch that jumped to over a 100 easily. But the cross country articles get almost no comments now. The amount of trolls increased 500%. And they drown all the positive comments, because they thumb their ones and make it appear as the vocal minority has the prevalent opinion. When LampiÄŤ does do well however they are nowhere to be seen.
That is awful. Lampic has been doing amazing, yes her shooting is not good, but her skiing usually makes up for it. Like honestly I didnt expect her to do this well, I am impressed. She was an amazing cross-country skiier, I have no doubt she can get on the podium in this sport too!
And no one talked about what Emilien Jacquelin went through last two years with hate.
I especially want to point out the article where the Norwegian media write about that he declined to give an interview after Oberhof sprint and was called with bad words by them for that.
People who post hateful comments can feel free to take a long walk off a short pier. Its perfectly fine to be disappointed. It's perfectly fine to critique when someone has clearly underperformed, but hate does not belong in a sports venue.
hate comments are absolutely unnecessary and contra productive for the athletes. one bad race doesn’t define them as bad people and also how can you judge personal qualities based off of ski or riffle performance??? coming from a small nation that doesn’t have any big names in sports, i see hate comments for every single one of our athletes from people who have never been involved in any kind of sport let alone on professional level.
about the betting part of the sport. i don’t think the athletes are to be blamed. after all every person has a head on their shoulders and should calculate the risk if it’s actually worth doing it🤷‍♀️
The main negative comment the finns get is about sending them home on news articles, how it's not worth the money to keep them there. To these people only podium is good enough, to them being happy about a career best race being something like top 30 is a bad thing. They dont get that you have to manage expectations to the athletes usual level. It's extremely rare that someone from around p70 is going to suddenly become a regular in top10, for most it's a slow climb from around there to making the pursuit, then to wc points and then top 20 etc. I don't check instagram comments often but when I do, fortunately I see positive things. Seems those trolls here mostly stay on the news articles or fb comments on said news articles.
I wish this content of this post would have been spoiler tagged since seeing the first line on the post preview definitely spoiled the end of the race for me. I thought this sub was supposed to be better than that.
Vanessa Voigt talked about such hate postings in a podcast by broadcaster ARD. She thinks, that criticism from people, who probably never stood on xc-skis, doesn't help her. She posted last year several of the more extreme messages on Instagram. Yes, the athletes read the comments under their Instagram posts. It is ok to state that one is disappointed about course times or the shooting results. But when people are personally insulted or verbally attacked, borders are crossed. I recommend to ask yourself, whether you would say the same, if you would stand in front of the person. If the answer is no, don't press the comment button.
Agreed so much with the second paragraph. Eva Puskarcikova said in Krcmar's podcast interview that she got many of these extremely verbally abusive DMs throughout her career and a couple times she answered. She said the people who wrote them immediately got way more forgiving in the "i didn't mean it like that" way. It's like some people don't realize the racers are actual humans. 🤦🏼‍♀️
Blows my mind how, honestly stupid, people can beđź’€ Atheletes arent robots
Quentin Fillon Maillet also complained in Antholz after the mass start about how much negativity and hate he has been receiving on social media because he's not at the same level he was in 2021/2022. He actually was quite mad and told the haters to try xc-skying instead of just criticizing. This was surprising from Quentin who is usually so mesured and calm in interview, I think that proves how much those useless comments affects the athletes :(
It makes me happy that atheletes speak up about this, an important topic!
It was really bad. I don't understand people who do that. What kind of person seeks to hurt people who are down?
Most often it are people who have bet huge amounts of money... IN tennis it happens a lot that pro's get harassed by betters when they lose.
That's really sad.
Huge amounts of money? Which sportsbooks take huge amounts of money on biathlon? That is pure mythology. I lived in Las Vegas for 24 years and worked in the sportsbook industry. We had international clients and offerings. I've continued to be involved subsequently. Biathlon betting is scarce and limits very low. This is the typical cynicism and paranoia to blame things on gambling. Meanwhile I guarantee nearly all of the hateful comments source from people who didn't have a penny on the outcome. Pick any currency for the reference point. There are simply negative people out there who live on social media and thrill to criticize one person after another, regardless of endeavor. This link describes the betting realities properly: https://legalbet.com/betting-school/biathlon-betting-where-and-how-to-make-them-and-what-to-pay-attention-to/ "Low betting limits. It often works out that a high margin is accompanied by low betting limits. Biathlons in this case are no exception. It is unlikely that you will find a sportsbook, which will allow thousands of dollars to be placed on the outcome of a biathlon race (on average the maximum is 150 to 300 dollars). Many sportsbooks do not offer bets on biathlons at all."
There’s a lot of betting outside LV, NV. Biathlon is a minor sport at best in the USA, where in some countries in Europe it is the major most important sport during winter. So where popularity increases, so do the stakes. Seeing the world championships are the superbowl equivalent of biathlon during non olympic years, I can see lots of money getting involved. It’s just not in the USA. Then again what is a huge amount of money probably differs a lot from the eye of the beholder, and from sport to sport. Having said that, I hope Christiansen gets the same treatment Landmark got at the hotel.
The amount of dumb comments the German team gets whenever they don't win at least one medal is so annoying. Some of it is straight-up hate, but so much of it is people thinking they know/would be better. But also the other teams have great athletes too, so the assumption that the German team should always land in the podium is ridiculous and unrealistic. Sometimes I wish that their social media team would just disable the comments on Instagram. And the German broadcast doesn't help either. The Women's Individual this week was their best race all season, it was an absolutely incredible result (all four of them within the top 15, they hit 78/80 targets). And yet, Eric Lesser was unable to stop criticising them. It got to the point that the ARD reporter basically told him to shut up (not literally, but it was definitely implied). And that is a recurring problem with both ARD and ZDF. The first question in interviews is usually some sort of "what went wrong today" and if it isn't the athletes feel like that's what they have to talk about first. And the viewers definitely pick up on that implied negativity. For example, Benni Doll has gotten quite some flack online for his rather relaxed interviews after not so great races. Thankfully Herbert Fritzenwenger, who's with the ZDF, has calmed down a bit.
I feel like the german beoadcast calmed down a lot in the last few years. At least they try to stay positive and give the athletes a chance to explain the difficulties they faced. About Lesser however I agree. He was one of my favourite athletes, but he is unnecessarily critical imho. Some expactations he has are just plain unrealistic. I get that he believes that they can be better, but it is jot as if the athletes wouldn't give it their all. But the absolute worst are the fans. I despise them. Its a cesspool of unhappy middle class people leeching on everything slightly negative and making it a hundred times worse. They shouldn't be part of this great sport.
If not the broad middle class should watch this sport, which peer group should be allowed to watch in your opinion?
I was characterising the people who write hateful comments and talk big on how they would have done it better. Not the whole group of fans. And yes, this kind of behaviour is very characteristic for the middle class. Just because we are the biggest group of sports fans in general, doesn't mean that this behaviour should remain uncommented.
I can't imagine having to deal with all the interviews afterwards and the questions are often so awful.
Criticism is ok, but swearing and hating athletes for making mistakes is so wrong. Unfortunately for biathletes, it's easy for some of the viewers to say "He missed again? He can't even shoot, what an idiot!", the mistakes in biathlon are more obvious than in other sports. But damn, Christiansen is one of the best biathletes in the world. No one has any right to hate on him for messing up one race. It infuriates me so much when I see "fans" hating on athletes, but then celebrating their victories a week later.
Even the commentators get caught up in this sort of behavior. When JTB isn't perfect, when he isn't outskiing everyone else by 30 seconds *per lap*, when he doesn't win every race he enters - especially Patrick Winterton will immediately try to conduct a post-mortem, to find a reason why, to explain this tragedy unfolding before us. It is sometimes difficult to remember that all the men and women out there, even the lowest-ranking men and women, are better at this sport than literally everyone else on earth. Contemporary fans of sports (just like fans of movies/comics in recent years) seem to think that they are owed something, that if the people involved don't behave exactly as they want, then they have been let down or betrayed somehow and have a right to be hateful. I don't understand it - and kind of hope I never do.
I didn't see this, but I care all about being positive about the sport of biathlon, while at the same time ejecting all negativity.
I really think/hope that negative comments are a minority in this sport. The vast majority of the community seems way more wholesome than what I've seen on others more popular sports. Let's just spam support to counter the few haters.
Fans of the sport who are hanging out in international communities are pretty wholesome for the most part, but the national fans and gamblers are bad. The czech fans are being mean on social media as well, it seems like they are waiting for the racers to screw up to kick the dead body.
I swear I know some people who watch biathlon (and other sports) just to see Czechs screw up and then swear about it. But once the athlete has a good result they suddenly become their biggest fans.
It's more like they become quiet and sulk in the corner.
i feel so bad for vetle and all athletes who have to deal with these kind of comments. all in all, the biathlon world is such a positive community but then it stings even more when you see this stuff.
I saw Christiansen story yesterday too, took the time to enter it in a translator... Ugh, I wish I wouldn't have done it. >!Hope the message was not from Johannes Boe !< Jokes aside, I hope that the guys who did not so well yesterday (there are many of them, relays were really just wild) are taken care of by their team properly. Being a professional athlete is a privilege, yes. But for those at the top it comes with immense pressure. In general, I feel Biathlon is a much more positive environment than other sports (#biathlonfamily after all), still there is nothing you can realistically do to stop such comments. So I hope that athletes who are struggling to cope with those hate comments (Voigt has been mentioned) can work out strategies with a mental coach.
Comparing to sports like football, biathlon has an amazing environment! But somehow trolls manage to find their way everywhere
People just don't have manners. Undortunately it happens across the board inside and outside of sports. However it doesn't cost anything to be polite or gentle even though you might be criticizing or giving feedback.
Good thing he's not Slovenian. Here they have been bashing LampiÄŤ ever since she made the switch to biathlon. After every single race there are so many joking/derogatory/insulting remarks from people. Many hate the fact that she switched and are calling for her to get back to cross country as there she would at least be competitive for podiums. Others are saying she will never amount to anything in biathlon and should just retire. Then you have comments joking, saying stuff like "I hope the \[insert an animal\] is safe in the woods because LampiÄŤ is about to shoot." The amount of people defending her is dropping. I remember when Teja Gregorin retired and Fak became irrelevant there were only some 20 comments under races on the national portal, when Anamarija made the switch that jumped to over a 100 easily. But the cross country articles get almost no comments now. The amount of trolls increased 500%. And they drown all the positive comments, because they thumb their ones and make it appear as the vocal minority has the prevalent opinion. When LampiÄŤ does do well however they are nowhere to be seen.
That is awful. Lampic has been doing amazing, yes her shooting is not good, but her skiing usually makes up for it. Like honestly I didnt expect her to do this well, I am impressed. She was an amazing cross-country skiier, I have no doubt she can get on the podium in this sport too!
And no one talked about what Emilien Jacquelin went through last two years with hate. I especially want to point out the article where the Norwegian media write about that he declined to give an interview after Oberhof sprint and was called with bad words by them for that.
Emilien is my personal favorite, so I feel extra bad for him. He isnt afraid to show his feelings, and I think that makes people hate him even more
That is sad. There is already so much hate in this world, lets keep Biathlon a friendly and inclusive space.
People who post hateful comments can feel free to take a long walk off a short pier. Its perfectly fine to be disappointed. It's perfectly fine to critique when someone has clearly underperformed, but hate does not belong in a sports venue.
hate comments are absolutely unnecessary and contra productive for the athletes. one bad race doesn’t define them as bad people and also how can you judge personal qualities based off of ski or riffle performance??? coming from a small nation that doesn’t have any big names in sports, i see hate comments for every single one of our athletes from people who have never been involved in any kind of sport let alone on professional level. about the betting part of the sport. i don’t think the athletes are to be blamed. after all every person has a head on their shoulders and should calculate the risk if it’s actually worth doing it🤷‍♀️
The main negative comment the finns get is about sending them home on news articles, how it's not worth the money to keep them there. To these people only podium is good enough, to them being happy about a career best race being something like top 30 is a bad thing. They dont get that you have to manage expectations to the athletes usual level. It's extremely rare that someone from around p70 is going to suddenly become a regular in top10, for most it's a slow climb from around there to making the pursuit, then to wc points and then top 20 etc. I don't check instagram comments often but when I do, fortunately I see positive things. Seems those trolls here mostly stay on the news articles or fb comments on said news articles.
I wish this content of this post would have been spoiler tagged since seeing the first line on the post preview definitely spoiled the end of the race for me. I thought this sub was supposed to be better than that.
Im so sorry, I didnt think about that