Adeleke ‘in dark place’ after online abuse, says coach

Rhasidat Adeleke’s coach Edrick Floreal has revealed that the Irish athlete was “in a dark place” after reading racist posts about her online in the wake of her star turn at the European Championships.

Adeleke won mixed 4x400m relay gold, women’s 4x400m relay silver and individual 400m silver in a terrific week in Rome.

She will head to the Paris Games as one of Ireland’s brightest medal hopes, and yet the immensely talented Tallaght 21-year-old has had to endure some toxic comments made on social media.

“There’s some negative stuff said in the media and it really affected her, that her own people said negative things about her being an Irishwoman or not,” Floreal told Dubin radio station FM104.

“I think that’s probably the most pain I’ve seen her have.

“She was really in a dark place when she read those things on the internet. She doesn’t cry ever, so when she cries it’s like, ‘oh my God’, so that bothered her more than I ever thought and I just let her handle it.

“I told her, ‘this is part of the deal, being who you are, attracting the attention you are attracting, that’s part of the deal, it comes with the territory, you can’t have one without the other and you’re going to have to accept it for what it is and deal with it and continue to train and perform’.

“That’s probably the worst I’ve seen her as far as really feeling down on herself because of those things that were said on the internet.”

Adeleke will head to the Olympics with big ambitions.

After winning silver in the 400m behind Poland’s Natalia Kaczmarek, she said: “When I crossed the line and realised I came second, I was a bit devastated.

“But as my coach said, we’ve been training through this competition, so to come out here and run a PB, I’m really excited.

“This is my first 400m competition of the year as well, so I’m really excited.

“Whatever we can do here, we’ll do, but we’ve been training and are going to continue training really hard for the next couple of weeks and hopefully when it comes time for Paris, I’ll be where I need to be.”