Chinese netizens outraged after commentator hits out at Olympic hero on social media

A popular sport commentator with 17 million followers on his Chinese microblogging site has drawn a flurry of anger for hitting out at an unnamed female athlete who spends taxpayers’ money to play a sport that “hardly anyone in the country plays or understands”.

Although commentator Huang Jianxiang did not name the athlete in his Weibo post, netizens believed that he was referring to laser radial sailor Xu Lijia, the defending Olympic champion who finished a disappointing 18th out of the 37 competitors in Rio .

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Xu shot to fame after winning gold in the London Olympics despite having little vision out in her left eye and only 50 per cent of her hearing. She also had a tumour removed from her knee just as her sailing talents were being discovered.

Commentator Huang first accused the athlete of blaming her failure on how other competitors were being unfair to her.

“There was a female athlete who has spent taxpayers’ money on a sport that hardly anyone in the country plays or understands. She said she was treated unfairly when she was disqualified at the first stage. Is it true that she was disqualified the other times because the whole world wanted to be unfair to China?” wrote Huang, who frequently appears on different television networks as a sport commentator.

“For those athletes who are disqualified because other athletes being unfair to China, should the country say sorry to them?