Greece dismiss Olympian following Twitter race row
GREEK triple jumper Voula Papachristou has been expelled from competing at London 2012 after posting comments on Twitter that were considered to be racist.
The Greek Olympic Committee deemed Papachristou to have undermined the spirit of the Games in tweets mocking African immigrants and in support of a far-right political party and, despite her subsequent attempts to apologise for what she described as an “unfortunate and tasteless joke”, consequently chose to ban her from participating.
Having also re-tweeted a comment from a politician criticising the Greek Prime Minister’s views on immigration, Papachristou had written: “With so many Africans in Greece… At least the West Nile mosquitoes will eat home made food!!!”.
Her comments were in reference to the appearance of Nile-virus carrying mosquitoes in Athens and were later deleted, but by then a furious Twitter reaction had already built.