British pole vaulter Holly Bradshaw scarred by online abuse: "There’s no way I would ever feel comfortable to have my stomach out on TV"

It has become very common for most athletes to stay off social media before and during competitions.

A social media post can disrupt their focus and potentially even hurt them for a long time. The latter is something Olympic pole vault bronze medallist Holly Bradshaw knows all too well.

Since she was a teenager, the British track and field athlete has been targeted by continued negative comments about her body image

“I remember it was one of my first Diamond Leagues and to not do so well or to jump a certain height or whatever and then have people comment like, ‘Oh, she looks so unathletic'," she said in a recent interview with Olympics.com.

“I had people calling me fat on social media. It was really, really hurtful."

Years later, the 31-year-old again found herself on the receiving end of trolls after a freak accident at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene.

Bradshaw was "heavily abused" for withdrawing from the competition after snapping her pole in the warm-up and landing on the back of her neck.

“Someone actually said, ‘You're so big, you even snap the pole!’," she recalled.

Holly Bradshaw’s helplessness in the face of online abuse

Bradshaw was excited to be competing in her home Olympics at London 2012.

She’d just won bronze at the 2010 World U20 Championships and was one of Team GB’s rising stars.

However, the abuse she had received on social media before the Games and the ensuing negative talk about her body image began to take its toll.

"In 2011, 2012, there was a lot of press leading into the home Olympics. I got a lot of criticism about the way I looked, especially around my body weight. At one point, if you googled my name, one of the top links just said 'Holly Bleasdale (her maiden name) fat'," she shared in a post on social media.

“I was just terribly embarrassed!” she told Olympics.com of the comments around her as a teenage athlete, who was also new to social media.

“It wasn't just the social media. It was kind of coming at me from all different angles. I was like, ‘What if I am fat? I am overweight?’ Then, I spent a year when I would skip meals. I would drastically cut portion sizes because if this is what people are saying about me, I need to lose weight.”

It was a difficult period for the nine-time British outdoor champion, who had just clinched bronze at the 2012 World Indoor Championships and cleared 4.87m - then the third-highest height indoors at the time.

“It’s now only in reflection that I think, what on earth was I doing?” she remembered.

“This particular year, I'd just jumped the third-highest bar of all time, and yet people were saying I was too overweight and too fat. It's just staggering that people would say that when I was the third-best in the world ever.”

Holly Bradshaw: The long-term effects of body shaming

Since that moment she has been struggling with her body image.

“From then on, I was conscious about my stomach. I've always had relatively toned legs and arms. Even though I have a flat stomach, I don't think I'm ever going to be the athlete that's going to have a six-pack.”

Going to her third Olympics at Tokyo 2020 in 2021, Bradshaw openly shared her concerns about competing in the cropped top and bikini-style pants Team GB had designed.

The five-time European medallist was allowed to compete in a modified onesie rowing kit for Tokyo. She went on to become the first-ever British pole vault medallist at the Games.

But even that honour wouldn’t save her from the torrent of online abuse she received after her pole snapped during practice in Eugene.

“I got heavily abused after the World Championships,” she said.

“People would comment and say, ‘Oh, don't be such a baby landing on a big squishy mat!' 'Get up and get on with it stop the attention-seeking,’ someone else said...

“‘You're so big, you even snap the pole…!’ I can just brush those off better now as I think a lot of the comments are made on a lack of understanding.

“For that person at home, I just asked them, what was the purpose of that? If you want to think that in your head, fine, say it to your spouse or your friend or whatever. But to post that at me and on social media is so aggressive and so hurtful.”

Olympic and world champion pole vaulter Katie Nageotte-Moon has been a vocal supporter of her fellow competitor on and off the field.

In Oregon she immediately went over to support Bradshaw and then spoke on her defence on social media.

“I wanted to address those negative comments online because, first of all, Holly is the toughest athlete I’ve ever met. For her to pull out of a competition, especially a World Championships, no one would ever just do that,” Nageotte-Moon told World Athletics.

“It’s also ignorance around our sport. It’s kind of insulting to the sport as a whole when people say: ‘Oh, she only fell 2ft; she’s really milking it. When you break a pole, it would be like taking a metal baseball bat and hitting it against a metal pole as hard as you can. I’ve seen so many injuries from it, so if nothing else, I want to teach people about the sport."

That unpleasant moment led to the pair being awarded the World Athletics Fair Play Award.

Holly Bradshaw on how online trolling keeps athletes away from social media

Bradshaw’s disturbing online experiences partly inspired an abuse study by World Athletics conducted during the Tokyo Olympics.

One of the key findings of the study published last November was that female athletes received 87 percent of all identified abuse.

“Sadly, I wasn't shocked because of the amount of abuse I've had and a lot of some of my close friends in the sport have had,” she ruefully remarked.

“I'm so saddened by it because sport for me is you going out there to see how high you can jump, how fast you can sprint, what medals can you win."

The vaulter, who has a master’s degree in sports psychology, feels the abusive posts are what sometimes make social media a no-go zone for most athletes.

“It’s sad that athletes are having to take time-outs from social media sites because of how negative they can be.

“I’ll definitely have a social media block for a week or two weeks before a major championship, and I don't want to do it, but if I'm the day out from the Olympic final and someone posts a comment as negative, which is very likely to happen, that upsets my mindset.”

As she eyes her fifth World Championships, the Loughborough-based athlete continues to raise awareness of online vilification amongst sportswomen, specifically highlighting the effects on mental health and productivity.

“Social media sites make so much money, the least they could do is put a bit more of their profits into finding a way of keeping people safe, protecting people. I don’t think it’s a lot to ask with today’s technology,” she reckoned.

“And the more people are speaking out on the damage that could be done, there will be a little bit more understanding as to what the athletes are going through.”