Poor dear.
People are being downright unkind to an Ethiopian swimmer, body-shaming him for having what, in one of the more charitable comments, is called a dad bod.
Robel Kiros Habte competed in the men’s 100-meter freestyle heats on Tuesday and finished last in the three-swimmer heat.
In yesterday’s 100m freestyle prelims, Ethiopia’s Robel Habte swam so slow he slipped off the screen pic.twitter.com/NSvoeio2kL
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) August 10, 2016
Overall, he finished last among the 59 competitors in the eight heats with a time of 1 minute 4.95 seconds. Habte confessed that his personal best was 59.08 seconds; Australia’s Kyle Chalmers won his heat with a time of 47.9 seconds.
Ecadf, an Ethiopian news site, called him “out of shape.” Others coldly called him “Robel the Whale.” Habte is 5 feet 9 and weighs 179 pounds. Chalmers, for instance, is 6-4 and weighs 194.
First cheer at the #Rio2016 pool goes to Ethiopia's Robel Habte. Not quite Eric the Eel but close. pic.twitter.com/JlByyBm0O2
— Jai Bednall (@jaibednall) August 9, 2016
(Eric “the Eel” Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea completed the 100-meter freestyle in 1:52.72 during the Sydney Games.)
And still others noted that Habte is the, ahem, son of the president of the country’s swimming federation.
#Ethiopia 's #RobelHabte. 59th place at #Rio2016 . With him is the #ETH swim federation president who's HIS DAD. pic.twitter.com/kLLzLA1dAS
— Zecharias Zelalem (@ZekuZelalem) August 10, 2016
Whatever brought him to Rio, the 24-year-old college student was a crowd favorite and was pretty happy just to be there.
“I wanted to do something different for my country, that’s why I chose swimming,” he told Reuters. “Everybody, every day you wake up in Ethiopia, you run. Not swimming. But I didn’t want to run, I wanted to be a swimmer. It didn’t matter where I finished.”
