Maddie Groves has made a name for herself as a two-time Olympic silver medalist. She has been working very hard over the last few years to gear up for the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, which were pushed back a year due to the global pandemic. However, Groves has come under added pressure recently during the Australian trials ahead of the summer games and has since decided to drop out of the Olympics because she has been inundated with “misogynistic perverts” in the swimming field.
Maddie did not mention names when announcing that she would be dropping out of the Olympic trials because of “perverts.” However, she does not need to make such an announcement. Instead, she has made it very clear in the past that she has been harassed while swimming competitively. Maddie decided that she would rather live a life of peace than one filled with harassment from a “misogynistic pervert” who continued to bother her at the pool.
Unfortunately, Maddie’s decision means that she will not be competing in Tokyo this summer. Although she’s a world-class swimmer, earning silver twice in the Olympics, she will not be throwing herself into the water to compete in the 200-meter butterfly or the 4×100 medley – both events she placed in during the summer games in Rio in 2016.
Now, Maddie says “time’s up” for the perverts and that she is done swimming so long as they continue to be allowed to harass her while she is trying to compete.
She wrote an Instagram post explaining why she was dropping out of the Olympics – and it hit some fans quite hard.
“I’ve made the decision not to compete at Olympic Trials in Adelaide. I’m so grateful to feel so supported in this decision. I feel very relieved, and I’m looking forward to racing at some other competitions later in the year (yeah, sorry/not sorry, you haven’t got rid of me just yet!).”
She added, “I’m so excited to watch everyone at trials (streaming on Amazon y’all) and to see who will be representing Australia in Tokyo – whatever happens, I genuinely think this will be one of the fastest Australian Swim Teams ever, and I encourage everyone to get on the bandwagon early. Best of luck to everyone competing at Olympic Trials but most of all to my beautiful team from @moretonbay_swimming, my amazing coach @david_lush_, and everyone that has worked with our squad during this prep.”
Maddie didn’t share too many details in her first post. Fortunately, she followed it up with another that provided more details about why she was quitting the Olympics.
“Let this be a lesson to all misogynistic perverts in sport and their boot lickers. You can no longer exploit young women and girls, body shame, or medically gaslight them and then expect them to represent you so you can earn your annual bonus. Time’s UP.”
She declared herself finished with the sport that encouraged “bad behavior” and rewarded the perverts in power.
What do you think about this Olympic swimmer’s decision not to compete?