Dylan Bettencourt
Double Olympic champion Elaine Thompson-Herah has been banned from Instagram for two days for copyright infringements. Her crime is that she shared TV clips of herself winning the 100m and 200m sprint races.
Thompson-Herah repeated the double victory she had achieved at the Rio Olympics in 2016.
The Jamaican wanted to share her victories with her 310,000 Instagram followers but that move backfired as she tweeted: “I was blocked on Instagram for posting the races of the Olympics because I do not own the right to do so. So see ya’ll in two days.”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said the removal of any unauthorised content is an automatic process that does give special permission to athletes to post their content.
The IOC is reportedly set to receive approximately R57 billion in television rights for the broadcasting of the 2018 Pyeongchang winter Olympics and the Tokyo 2020 games.
“The income from the sales of the broadcasting rights is an important element in the financing of the Olympic movement and helps build the Olympic stage on which athletes can shine,” said the IOC.
“The IOC redistributes more than 90% of its income to the wider sporting movement, which means that every day the equivalent of $3.4 million goes to help athletes and sports organisations at all levels around the world.”
Thompson-Herah is set to compete in the women’s 4x100m relay event with qualifiers on Thursday. The final is set for Friday with the Jamaicans being the overwhelming favourites as they claimed all three podium spots in the women’s individual 100m event.
Image source: @NPR
