What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Olympics Disinformation

If you've been following sports on social media over the last week or so, I'm sure you've seen pictures and video of Canadian athlete Tyler Mislawchuk puking after competing in the Paris Olympics' triathlon, maybe accompanied by a headline like: "Video shows Canadian triathlete throwing up after swimming in Seine River."

According to experts in online disinformation, Mislawchuk getting sick is one of many Olympic happenings that Russia is seizing on and intentionally misrepresenting to bolster a fake narrative about the games.

The real story behind the sick swimmer

First the facts: It's true that Mislawchuk puked after completing his triathlon and it's true that E. coli contamination in the Seine has been an ongoing concern at the Olympics, but the link between the two is tenuous.

As anyone who ran cross country in high school can tell you, it's not unusual for athletes to vomit after exerting themselves, and, according to Mislawchuk, it was because of the heat and the effort he put in in the race, not E. coli. I vomited 10 times after the race ... it got hot in the last laps," he told Triathlon Magazine. So was it E. coli? Probably not. But that so many people were led to believe it was is part of a larger drama that's been going on since the Cold War.

Russia and the spread of negative Olympics stories

According to Microsoft's Security Insider, Russia has a long history of trying to undermine the Olympics. According to Security Insider, if Russia "cannot participate in or win the Games, then they seek to undercut, defame, and degrade the international competition in the minds of participants, spectators, and global audiences," and they've been at it since they were the Soviet Union.

Back in the 1980s, the USSR distributed anonymous newsletters to denigrate the Olympics, making specious claims like non-white athletes would be hunted by racists at the 1984 Olympics. Computers, it turns out, are way more efficient at lie distribution than leaflets. The modern campaign against Paris and the Olympics themselves began as early as year ago with a feature-length anti-Olympics propaganda film called "The Olympics Has Fallen" that was spread mainly on Telegram. During the games, Russia has been either misrepresenting facts in real-time or inventing them entirely through AI in order to portray Paris as a crime-ridden, rat-infested nightmare.

According to ABC News, "30,000 social media bots linked to a notorious Russian disinformation group" are spreading AI-created videos and boosting any negative news that comes out of the games to further Moscow's agenda. The shadowy network scored a small victory with the post-race footage of Mislawchuk, but its biggest victory in 2024 so far is the PR coup provided by Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.

Gender controversy and women's sports

Russian botnets swung into action quickly after Angela Carini quit her first-round Olympic boxing match against Khelif. Aided by (alleged) humans like Donald Trump and J.K. Rowling, Russia's disinfo network was able to manufacture a controversy over Khelif's gender that probably reached your MAGA uncle. The claims that Khelif is not actually a woman were bolstered by a 2023 disqualification by the International Boxing Association. This makes it look like there are two sides to the story, until you learn the IBA has deep Russian ties and its eligibility tests are extremely suspect.

What can be done about Russian Olympic disinformation?

While French authorities are taking a fairly hard-line approach toward disinformation, including arresting a Russian man for conducting intelligence work on behest of a foreign power" in order to provoke hostilities in France," combating online disinformation is very difficult. So from now until the Tom Cruise closes out the show, the best we can do is be as skeptical about sports news as we've learned to be about political news.