The Tokyo Olympics has every sports enthusiast glued to their television screens as they cheer for their favourite athlete. However, one video of a German sportswoman has left people shocked.
In the video which has now gone viral, German Judo star Martyna Trajdos is seen being violently shaken and slapped by her coach Claudiu Pusa to apparently “pump her up”, reports The Independent. He slaps her twice before she marches out for her fight.
However, this does not faze the athlete. She is seen simply nodding and entering the combat area, as if it were normal. Have a look at the video here:
This is the coaching I need on Mondays, around 7am #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/b9BeLUfus4
— Andrew Gourdie (@AndrewGourdie) July 27, 2021
While a few people joked about the incident, many took to Twitter to highlight that this was not okay. They condemned the coach’s behavior and called it “wrong”.
Not funny.
🚩I’m an Olympic champion – and this is WRONG.
🚩The culture of #AthleteAbuse is on full display here, out in the open, and the athlete accepts it – it’s normalized.
🚩The serious harms that flow from abuse don’t go away if the athlete wins.
STOP https://t.co/ysVe3hU45X— Nancy Hogshead-Makar, JD, Oly (@Hogshead3Au) July 28, 2021
Isn’t this violence against females? Must be!
— Dave M Cull (@dreamer3638) July 27, 2021
Absolutely rubbish. What are we teaching to young adults? That it's okay to raise your hand and embarrass people on national tv? https://t.co/Ysc6N4qctS
— Tanya 😎✌ (@tanyarocks921) July 28, 2021
How can this be called coaching ? This is abuse not coaching. Period . https://t.co/gYyEsz1VLB
— Ruchi Angrish (She/Her) (@RuchiAngrish) July 28, 2021
This is appalling and completely unacceptable. There is no adequate justification.
— bendotu (@calliopeski) July 28, 2021
This is so wrong 😑 https://t.co/07SyPD60g0
— Odisha Rasagola (@lazyodia) July 28, 2021
However, the athlete defended her coach and said that she asked him to do what he did.
“This is what I asked my coach to do so please don’t blame him. I need this before my fights to be awake.”
She even took to Instagram to share the video and write, “Look’s like this was not hard enough. As I already said that’s the ritual which I chose pre-competition! My coach is just doing what I want him to do to fire me up!”
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