Greek athlete expelled from Olympics for racist tweet

Greece's triple-jump champion was expelled from the Olympics after posting a tasteless tweet about Africans and the West Nile virus.

Hellenic Olympic Committee officials announced Voula Papachristou wouldn't travel to London after she tweeted a joke about African immigrants.

On Monday, the track athlete posted a tweet reading, "with so many Africans in Greece, at least the West Nile mosquitos will be eating food from their own home." The comments created an uproar on Greek social media. Papachristou didn't address the criticism on Twitter for two days.

Greece later announced it would place Papchristou "outside the Olympic team for statements contrary to the values and ideas of the Olympic movement."

Values outside the Olympic movement? So if she had sold her Twitter account to the highest bidder, went on a McDonald's diet or decided to sit out the Games rather than face a member of a different religion, she'd be cool? Ban her if you want, Greece, but don't pin it on the questionable values of the Olympic movement.

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Papachristou's tweet was tasteless, inane, tasteless (again) and not at all funny. But does it deserve Olympic banishment? Look, if you have to parse how racist a statement is, then it's already too racist. But there's still a threshold that needs to be crossed to get into the "we're going to ban you from the Olympics" territory and I'm not sure Papachristou's tweet got there. Unless you think she's suggesting that she wants African Greeks to contract West Nile (I don't think you can't make that assumption based on this tweet), then this is stupid racial humor rather than racism.