Olympics

Mikaela Shiffrin has a message for targets of speech from haters: ‘Keep on going’

The Olympic skier shared a video with her social media followers in which she said the post was intended “for the peeps who receive the hate."

By Andrew Mahoney

1 minute to read

One day after she posted a series of ugly comments on her Instagram and Twitter accounts she suggested were directed at her, Olympic skier Mikaela Shiffrin shared a video with her followers in which she said the post was not in response to her detractors, but rather “for the peeps who receive the hate”.

“My post last night was not actually intended for the haters. It was intended for those people who are getting hate,” the two minute and 20 second video began.

Shiffrin went 0 for 5 in individual races at the Beijing Olympics, including three races in which she was unable to finish after missing a gate.

She leaves the Olympics shut out from the podium in individual events for the first time in her career. At PyeongChang in 2018, Shiffrin won gold in giant slalom and silver in Alpine combined. At Sochi in 2014, she won gold in slalom.

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“I truly believe that if you try to address the haters by hating on the haters, it really only continues to spread hate, and it doesn’t fix the problem,” Shiffrin continued. “The haters are there because they decided they want to hate you, and you’re really not going to do anything to make them stop hating you, so you really might as well not waste your energy on that.

“But for the people out there who are experiencing any kind of those messages … That message was for you guys. To get up, and to keep going. To get out of bed the next day, even though you’re getting these messages that make you feel awful. Awful.”

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Shiffrin closed her video with more words of encouragement.

“I think a lot of you have that fire in you, so you just go for it. Don’t send messages to your haters. They don’t deserve your time being wasted on them. You just spread the message to the next person who’s getting hate.”

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