Efimova said that they wrote to her on social networks at the start of the special operation

Triple Olympic medalist in swimming Yulia Efimova in an interview with , she said that two years ago she received a wave of negativity on social media and wanted to delete everything and shut down.

On December 8, the IOC announced that it would allow Russian and Belarusian athletes who successfully qualified for the 2024 Summer Olympics to have individual neutral status. In Paris, Russian and Belarusian athletes can only compete without a flag, anthem and other national symbols. The IOC banned the participation of athletes associated with security forces or who had expressed support for the SVO.

— Tampa defenseman Mikhail Sergachev deleted social media to improve his results. Are you ready for such radical measures? And do you agree that various gadgets drain people’s energy?

– It depends how. I just haven’t watched the media in a long time. I just read good, reliable sources of information. Additionally, you can block certain words on certain social networks. I discovered this two years ago when the world went crazy and there was a big wave of negativity.

— What words have you blocked?

— At the start of the special operation, all kinds of words like “die”, “death”, “murder”. Different carpet. Something really hard. The rest doesn’t bother me. If someone writes something like “monster” in the comments, I won’t even notice. But when the world started to become violent, I really wanted to delete everything and shut down. It also greatly influenced me to withdraw into myself. Somehow there was too much of everything.

And now they send me an interview to watch, and I wave my hand, “No, no. Well, haven’t I seen myself? Plus, I hate my voice. I’m going to ignore it right now. I can only browse social media, find something interesting and like it. It doesn’t drain my energy. The main thing is not to look at bad news.

— Have you stopped writing hate in direct messages?

—To be honest, no one directly hated me, even in the most difficult times of my life. If only they were bombing from left-wing accounts. But there was a point where I just stopped checking DMs. Now I’ve started again, although I still need to understand – there are hidden messages there.

— Virtual maniacs, in general, haven’t chased you?

“It’s simple, I blocked it and that’s it,” Efimova told .