RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Rafaela Silva hoped to get an Olympic gold medal four years ago in London. Instead she got racial abuse.
Disqualified in her Olympic judo match and eliminated from the chance of winning a medal, Brazil's Silva thought she'd find refuge in sympathetic text messages from fans in her country.
Instead, here's what she found: "The place for a monkey is in a cage. You are not an Olympian."
"The messages said I was an embarrassment to my family, so they really hurt," said Silva, who won gold in the world championships a year after London, and is among the favorites for gold when the Rio de Janeiro Olympics open in just over a week.