Los Angeles (AFP)
American Chloe Kim, Olympic snowboarding champion, is the victim of dozens of racist insults every day on social networks, against the backdrop of a wave of anti-Asian violence in the United States, she revealed on Friday.
Aged 20 and crowned at the 2018 Games in the halfpipe discipline, Kim was born in California to parents from South Korea.
She told ESPN in an interview that she is worried for her safety because of the racist slurs.
On Wednesday, Kim posted the screenshot of one of those messages, received earlier on Instagram: "I get hundreds of them every month and I'm very sad that people might think such behavior. is suitable, ”she wrote in the accompanying message.
"Just because I'm a professional athlete or because I won the Games doesn't mean I'm immune to racism. I get maybe thirty messages a day," Kim added in her interview with ESPN.
Anti-Asian slurs have haunted her ever since she won a silver medal at the 2014 X Games in Aspen, when she was still a teenager: "There were messages telling me to go back to China and not not take medals from the white girls on the team.
Kim noticed that anti-Asian slurs have picked up again since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic and statements by former US President Donald Trump on the "Chinese virus".
Sometimes she feels like "everyone" "hates" her because she is of Asian descent.
To walk her dog or go shopping, the young Olympic champion now travels with, in her handbag, a Taser, a pepper spray and a knife.
© 2021 AFP