Eilish McColgan recently highlighted just how much abuse she has to contend with. It is part of what has become part of an online epidemic that can have a dangerous impact on its victims

“Go eat some carbs.” “Too skinny.” “Eating disorder?” “She looks like a skeleton.”

These are just a few of the many harsh comments left on a social media post that was recently shared by Eilish McColgan. In the post, she is simply sharing a video of herself running on a treadmill while training for the London Marathon. However, rather than receiving supportive feedback for her dedication and effort, the replies quickly turn into a battleground of nasty remarks focused solely on her body.

Here we go again. The body shaming of female athletes – something that is, unfortunately, all too common. As more people leave their hateful comments, the more it seems to normalise the behaviour and encourage others to join in. So many seem hell bent on fuelling this harmful cycle.

This kind of abuse is, sadly, nothing new for McColgan. Like many female athletes who share their journeys on social media, she has faced similar scrutiny time and again – expressing that she now feels “numb” towards it.

Even her mother, former world 10,000m champion Liz, felt compelled to speak out in defence of her daughter last month, urging people to “stop the abusive online comments on women athletes’ appearances”.

This is the grim and persistent pattern that so many women can now face. While their male counterparts are often praised for their strength, power and performance, female athletes are routinely reduced to their physical appearance. The focus shifts from their achievements to their shape and size, creating a dangerous environment that fosters harmful stereotypes.

What about all that McColgan’s body has accomplished? She has represented Team GB in four Olympic Games, won a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games, set British records for the 5000m and 10,000m on the track, as well as 5km, 10km and half marathon on the road. These are just a few highlights from her impressive career and now she’s gearing up for her marathon debut later this month. There’s clearly more to come.

It’s clear that whatever McColgan is doing behind the scenes – from her training regime to her diet – is paying off. With her long, lean physique, the most frequent accusation she faces is of being anorexic. However, as she herself points out: “Being an elite female athlete is wild. Some people have no comprehension of how much you have to fuel your body to do this type of training. Bunch of clowns."

While it's often distance runners who are hit with the remarks about being "too skinny", McColgan’s experience is just one side of the story. Holly Bradshaw, Olympic pole vault silver medallist and International Olympic Committee (IOC) mental health ambassador, knows all too well about the other extreme. Throughout her career, she dealt with comments about being “overweight”.

As a teenager, Bradshaw was already making waves in the athletics world. After winning a bronze medal at the 2010 World U20 Championships, she was one of Great Britain’s brightest stars, preparing for her Olympic debut at the 2012 London Games. For most, it would be an exciting milestone but, for Bradshaw, it was overshadowed by a flood of social media abuse, much of it focused on her body.

“There was a lot of pressure leading into the home Olympics. I got a lot of criticism about the way I looked, especially around my weight,” she recalls. “People kept saying I didn’t look like the other athletes, and so I was clearly never going to make it. When I jumped to third all-time in the world, I was still called overweight, with too much puppy fat. I had just jumped the third-highest ever. If that doesn’t show you that what you look like on the outside doesn’t matter, then I don’t know what does. But, as a 20-year-old, it’s hard to believe that when it’s all anyone is talking about.”

The relentless criticism eventually took its toll and, to shield herself from the hate, Bradshaw made the decision to stop wearing crop tops while competing. Instead, she opted for an all-in-one suit paired with shorts. In pole vaulting, tight clothing is essential to prevent brushing the pole, so this was her only option.

But things didn’t get any easier. When it was time for Bradshaw’s third Olympic Games, in Tokyo, she found herself facing a dilemma. The official Team GB kit choices included bikini briefs and crop tops, or a high-cut, swimming-costume-style one-piece.

Bradshaw knew that wearing either of these outfits would expose her to more abuse, so she pushed back against the kit. In response, Team GB eventually agreed to adapt the rowing unitard for her, but the underlying injustice still stung. Why, she wondered, should female athletes be forced to show their bodies when their male counterparts competed without having to reveal their stomachs, thighs and bums?

While female track and field athletes have become more accustomed to wearing two-piece outfits, these aren’t something most women feel comfortable in, especially under the scrutiny of TV cameras and millions of viewers.

“The comments would say: ‘Just imagine how much higher she’d jump if she lost weight?’ or, ‘Holly Bleasdale [her maiden name] is so unattractive and so unathletic’,” adds Bradshaw. “Because I didn’t look like many of the other women out there, I was judged for it.”

Bradshaw went on to win an Olympic bronze medal in Tokyo, yet that wasn’t enough to halt the online abuse. One of the most painful experiences for her came at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, after she had to withdraw from the competition due to snapping her pole in the warm-up and landing on her neck. The trolls came for her again and, this time, they blamed her weight for the pole breaking.

“You can get ten abusive comments in a week, but if you were sitting in a room with those ten people, there is absolutely no way they would say those things to your face. It’s really cowardly, and it’s a horrible, dark side of society,” Bradshaw says.

“As an athlete, you're trying to stay focused, but it’s upsetting when people pass judgment like that. These people who made those comments after Oregon – 99 per cent of them don’t even care about me. They don’t know me, so I don’t know why they feel the need to say these things. Elite sport is hard enough as it is, especially in an event like pole vault, which is mentally demanding. Those comments can really get inside your head.”

The situations faced by McColgan and Bradshaw are just two from countless examples of this kind of abuse being aimed at female athletes across the board. A simple fix would be to come off social media, but that’s easier said than done when having an online presence has become such an important part of an athlete’s world.

These platforms serve as spaces to share everything from updates on fitness and training to personal lives and interests, offering a glimpse into the athletes’ personalities beyond the sport. But it's not just a way to connect with fans; it’s also an essential tool for securing the brand deals and promotions which help to fund their careers. Today, if you want to be an elite athlete, maintaining an Instagram account isn’t optional – it’s essential.

Take Georgia Hunter Bell, for example. Since her bronze medal at the Paris Olympic Games, she has seen a surge in followers, reaching 61,000 Instagram fans. As a Nike-sponsored athlete, she’s active on social media, continually engaging with her audience. However, that comes with an unfortunate side effect.

“Sometimes I’ll have people direct messaging me things and it is something that does need to stop,” she says. “It is a really tough one, because it drains a lot of your energy. You only have so much and, when you’re trying to focus on winning races, it’s tough to respond to every comment and look at them.

“I try to just see it as a compliment, almost. That’s what my husband, George, tells me to do. Because, when you get to a certain level, people think they can say what they want, that you’re fair game. It’s not nice, but it just proves people have got something to be angry about.”

What’s most concerning about this kind of abuse, now seen as “the norm”, is that it’s not just hurtful – it can be dangerous. Whether mentally or physically, it can sow the seeds of serious problems.

Even without the impact of social media, eating disorders are already a common problem in sport and can be incredibly difficult to manage. Athletes, especially, are at risk because their diet is such a big part of their training. That focus on food and weight can turn into an obsession, which is where issues start to take root.

Eating disorders are characterised by two key features – disturbed eating habits and disturbed weight control behaviours. Allie Outram, a former GB international runner who is now a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and Supervisor knows this struggle all too well.

“In some ways, running was really positive for me and because I really loved it I needed to eat to fuel my running. But it was also intrinsically linked to my eating disorder,” she explains.

When there’s a real pressure to fit a certain body type, that obsession can bring about harmful behaviours.

Developing an eating disorder is one potential consequence but, if an athlete doesn’t get enough calories to support the energy demands of their sport, they are also at risk of RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport). While the condition is not always tied to a diagnosed eating disorder, it can be just as dangerous – with symptoms for females including a loss of periods, reduced bone density and decreased immunity.

Outram has seen how common eating disorders can be in athletics. At just 16, she ran at the World Junior Cross Country Championships in Beijing, where she was captain of the British team. Of those six athletes, four were dealing with eating disorders.

Social media wasn’t as much of a factor back then, but the pressure to look a certain way was still very much there. Outram admits that, as a teenager, she already had a sense of what a “runner’s body” should look like – thanks to what she saw on TV. And now, with social media, that comparison has only gotten worse. If social media had been around when she was running, she can only imagine how much worse it would have been.

“I guess you’re born with the gun in society and it is your cultural and environmental circumstances which pull the trigger,” she says. “So I think if there are negative comments and female body shaming, then that could just be the trigger to tip someone over the edge.”

The abuse can leave a lasting impact. As sports psychologist Josephine Perry, who works closely with athletes, explains, she sees the mental struggles and insecurities they face every day.

“In an 800m race, you’re halfway through and that is when all those doubts creep into your mind,” she says. “It’s when it really hurts and the survival part of your brain is thinking you can stop right now.

“And that’s when the thoughts creep in. What if I’m not good enough? What if they’re judging you? What if my bum looks bigger than it should? What if they can see my cellulite?

“But what we want from athletes is for them to cross the finish line thinking, I couldn’t have done any more and they can be really proud of themselves. Then, other people’s judgments of whether their knicker height is too high or whether they’re too thin become irrelevant.”

The problem is that this issue goes way beyond a few negative comments. It has become a culture. So how do we change that? How do we start turning this hateful tide?

There have been some efforts made towards doing just that. The IOC introduced a new AI-powered cyber abuse protection service during the Paris 2024 Olympics – the largest initiative of its kind in sports.

According to the IOC, the system flagged over 152,000 potentially abusive posts and comments, often before they even reached the athletes. Of those, more than 10,200 were confirmed as abusive and reported for removal, coming from nearly 9000 different accounts.

While this was a step in the right direction, it’s important to recognise that the service didn’t catch every hateful comment and, of course, the Olympics are only once every four years. Athletes are constantly competing in other events throughout the year where this kind of protection won’t be in place.

Seb Coe, President of World Athletics, has been vocal about the damage caused by online abuse. Ahead of the IOC presidential election, he even called out X owner Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram), urging them to address the “pond life” abusing female athletes on their platforms. Although Coe didn’t win the election, there’s still hope that some action might be taken.

Until then, though, the attacks will keeping coming, so what can female athletes do to protect their wellbeing? Perry offers one technique. “I suggest athletes go into a ‘social media bubble’ three or four days before an event,” she says. “I’ve even suggested to athletes to get an old Nokia phone so they don’t have access to social media. Research shows that scrolling through your phone before a competition can actually harm performance, so finding other ways to distract yourself is key.”

Both Bradshaw and Hunter Bell have used this technique to help keep their heads clear, but there is another way that has shown itself to be effective.

“In the last year of my career I started to reply and to call them out,” says Bradshaw. “I like how Eilish always does it because it raises awareness of the horrible abuse that athletes are getting. I think as you get older and more mature you want to call them out because these people don’t even think about the effect their comments can have.”

With social media continuing to be so prominent, we can’t ignore the reality that it’s time to fight back. There is no quick fix or easy solution to these problems but perhaps the best way to start is with collective action.

Keep the conversation going, challenge these harmful behaviours and stand up for athletes when they speak out. Who knows? It might just start causing that culture to shift. One thing for sure is that we have to try – otherwise we risk letting things only get worse.