The Troubling Rise of Harassment and Stalking in Women’s Sports

There’s an often-unspoken consequence of being the best in your sport, especially if you’re a woman. “I fear that I’m being stalked,” Olympic track and field star Gabby Thomas shared in a video she posted to TikTok in late January after repeated incidents where middle-aged men had shown up at the airport, even at her gate, when she traveled to demand that she sign autographs, often getting “aggressive and hostile” when she said no. “Since we are public figures, many feel that we owe them something—whether that be an autograph, a picture, or our time,” Thomas told ELLE.

“This has happened to me MULTIPLE times,” gymnast Sunisa Lee wrote in the comments section on Thomas’s post; Simone Biles, Louisiana State University’s Olivia Dunne (who previously told ELLE she stopped attending classes “for safety reasons”), and tennis player Coco Gauff also left similar notes.

Thomas’s story clearly isn’t an anomaly. As women’s sports have experienced meteoric growth in recent years, many female athletes have come forward to share similar accounts of stalking and harassment. In August, a man who’d posted his plans to propose to UConn’s Paige Bueckers (he even posted a fake wedding invitation) was arrested while walking on the highway near Bradley International Airport, around 40 minutes from UConn’s campus. He told police he was on his way to see Bueckers. “It happens to all of us,” English tennis player Katie Boulter told The Guardian in December, sharing that a man messaged her at a tournament to say he was going to hurt her if she went outside.

Olympic track and field star Gabby Thomas spoke out in January about being stalked by middle-aged men at airports.

It seems like at least once a month a new high-profile incident comes to light. In January, a man was arrested after sending Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark vulgar messages on X and traveling to Indianapolis where Clark lives. In February, British tennis player Emma Raducanu hid behind the umpire’s chair during a match in Dubai after seeing a man sitting in the first few rows who, according to the Women’s Tennis Association, had “exhibited fixated behavior” the day before. (The man was detained and given a restraining order; three years prior, Raducanu filed a restraining order against a different man who walked 23 miles to her house and left notes for her.) Most recently, last month, British race car driver Katherine Legge told CNN that her social media has been flooded with toxic messages since she made her NASCAR Cup Series debut in March (she’s only the 17th woman to compete at NASCAR’s top level, and the first since Danica Patrick in 2018).

The constant influx of these stories is disturbing, but no longer surprising. Women’s sports are breaking new records every year. Since 2019, media coverage of women’s sports has nearly tripled. In 2024, a record two million fans attended a National Women’s Soccer League game. Over 1.5 million viewers tuned in for the 2024 WNBA Finals, a 115-percent increase from the prior year, and it’s only trending upward. Ticket sales on StubHub for the WNBA 2025 season, which begins on May 16, increased 145 percent since last season, and jumped 28 percent for first-time ticket buyers compared to this time last year.

The surge in recognition and popularity is what women’s sports fans all want to see, but “their visibility and exposure to countless more individuals has translated into an increased frequency and severity of harassment,” according to Dr. Sameer Hinduja, professor at Florida Atlantic University and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. “A big part of the problem is that people feel entitled to accessing athletes as a whole, but especially women,” Thomas, who won three gold medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics, told ELLE. “And a lot of the time when we don’t grant them that access, they can become hostile, and sometimes start to harass, which is what happened to me at the airport during my TikTok incident.”

In February, British tennis player Emma Raducanu notified officials at a match in Dubai that there was a man in the stands who had exhibited fixated behavior toward her.

This harassment isn’t limited to one sport or professional league. During the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, 87 percent of online abuse targeted women athletes, according to a World Athletics study, and most of the comments were sexual or racist in nature. “The levels have gone far beyond what I think anyone would ever have thought,” tennis player Sloane Stephens, who’s been vocal about online abuse she’s received, told ELLE. “Just how dangerous it is—no one’s really ever speaking about it.” When Stephens lost in the third round of the 2021 US Open, she received over 2,000 messages of abuse. Today, she said she receives around 100 abusive messages after each match, win or lose. “This isn’t something that happens once a year—it’s happening every week,” Stephens said. “To do your job and also manage being harassed and being mistreated—that’s another job in itself.”

We tell young girls to work hard to be the best in their sport—what we neglect to mention is what else they’ll be forced to face at the top. “I just want to run fast. I’m good at my job,” Thomas said. “Unfortunately, that just comes with additional challenges that have nothing to do with my sport, a lot of which male athletes don’t have to experience.”

When most people envision the life of a professional athlete, they may think of an intense training schedule, but “I don’t think people think about all the other crap that people deal with now,” long distance runner Emily Infeld said. In the spring of 2018, as Infeld trained for her second Olympics, she began receiving strange, long messages on Facebook from a man she’d never met. She blocked the account and moved on, but soon, new messages from him popped up on other platforms under different usernames. She blocked the accounts like a virtual game of Whac-A-Mole. Then, he started calling, leaving up to 15 voicemails a day, rambling on about how Carrie Underwood would perform at their wedding. He also sent her emails about their rings and his suit.

When a package arrived at her house from the same man, her heart raced—he knew where she lived. “I travel around competing, and I don’t know if this person is going to follow me there or if they’re going to try to attack me,” Infeld said. Fearing for her safety, she went to the police, filed for a stalking protective order (that she later obtained), and left her home in Portland, Oregon, for the summer with her husband. When the messages stopped, Infeld felt safe again, but not for long.

Tennis star Sloane Stephens has been vocal about online abuse she’s received.

In early 2020, according to ESPN, shortly before Infeld was scheduled to compete in a 5,000 meter race, she discovered disturbing messages from the same man. Months later, a private investigator, who she’d previously worked with, informed her that her stalker had driven cross-country and rented an apartment a mile and a half from her home in Oregon. She also learned that he’d posted on LinkedIn that he planned to kill his “ex-wife.” Infeld once again packed up and left her home not long after she found out.

The man, who had severe mental health issues following a traumatic brain injury, was charged by prosecutors in Portland in July for violating the protective order, but left the state. “You just don’t know, especially when someone is clearly not mentally all there, what they’re capable of,” Infeld told ELLE. He was arrested the following summer in Tennessee, and later hospitalized. In 2023, he was released under supervision and hasn’t contacted Infeld since, but the fear remains. “It’s made me a little different in that sense where I might not be as open as I once was,” Infeld added.

Chicago Sky’s Angel Reese said at a press conference that she had received death threats.

The number of incidents is increasing, but hostile behavior has long been the price of admission for women athletes. In 1993, tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed in the back during a match by a man hoping to help her opponent Steffi Graf, whom he was obsessed with, win. Serena Williams endured two (publicly known) stalkers in 2002 and 2011, as well as ongoing harassment from spectators, including a crowd that loudly booed her when she was just 19 years old. In 2009, law enforcement discovered handwritten poetry, duct tape, two loaded guns, and a wooden club in the car of a man who attempted to abduct gymnast Shawn Johnson East from the set of Dancing with the Stars. “To see someone with that kind of obsession made me really scared,” Johnson told ABC News at the time. “I competed internationally for Ghana in the long jump, and I can say that this isn’t a new problem at all,” said Yetsa Tuakli-Wosornu, an associate professor at Stanford University and the founding director of the Sports Equity Lab.

More recently, stories of abuse and harassment dominated headlines during the WNBA’s 2024 season, which serves as both “an exemplar and a microcosm” of the increased harassment that comes with increased visibility, said Nicole LaVoi, a senior lecturer on sports sociology at the University of Minnesota and director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport.

Last season, Indiana Fever’s Aliyah Boston quit social media due to constant online abuse. Dallas Wings’ DiJonai Carrington shared an email on Instagram stories that included “a racist slur and graphic threats of death and sexual assault.” New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart’s wife, former WNBA player Marta Xargay, received a homophobic death threat. Fans have at Phoenix Mercury’s Brittney Griner and other players. “I’ve been through so much,” Chicago Sky’s Angel Reese said through tears at a press conference. “I’ve been attacked so many times. Death threats. I’ve been sexualized. I’ve been threatened.”

Isabelle Harrison, a 10-year WNBA veteran, said there was a noticeable uptick in online abuse last season.

WNBA player Isabelle Harrison, a 10-year veteran who now plays for the New York Liberty, told ELLE there was a noticeable uptick in online abuse last season when she was playing for the Chicago Sky, even from her own fanbase. “The harassment that I got last season was directly from social media, and it was weird because I’ve never dealt with that before in the WNBA—it’s never been part of our culture,” Harrison said. “The only thing I could attribute it to is the new eyes and new fans of the league. I hate to say traumatic, but it definitely was traumatic. At times, social media can now be triggering for me after going through that experience.”

Unsurprisingly, women ballers are disproportionately impacted at the college level, too. A study conducted by the NCAA and Signify during the 2023-24 season found college women basketball players receive three times more online abuse compared to their male counterparts around March Madness.

While female athletes would prefer to have the focus on their abilities, spectators often dissect their appearance—some are “too skinny,” others are “too muscular.” “There is definitely the added issue of objectification and constant scrutiny that male athletes don’t get quite as much of,” Thomas said. “Whether it’s our hair, our clothing, or just how often we smile—there is always something to pick apart.” In September, Scottish runner Eilish McColgan shared a reel of hurtful comments she had received about her body. Two months later, trolls accused Orlando Pride’s Barbra Banda of being a “man” and “cheating” after she was named the BBC’s Women’s Footballer of the Year. “I always get these comments, but recently it’s kind of ramped up,” rugby player Ilona Maher said through tears in a TikTok video in December 2022. “I get comments being called a man and being called masculine and asking if I’m on steroids.”

Women athletes who don’t perfectly fit traditional gender stereotypes face an increased risk for inappropriate comments and abuse, according to Ketra Armstrong, a professor of Sport Management at the University of Michigan and the director of the Center for Race & Ethnicity in Sport. “This is why it is not uncommon for women athletes of color, those who may present more masculine, or those who identify as LGBTQ+ or non-binary, etc. to be subject to more abuse than white, heterosexual, feminine-presenting women athletes in general.” Sometimes it seems like a race to spew the most painful comment possible. “It's like, ‘Oh, that didn’t hurt her bad enough. Let me try to go here,’” Stephens said. “There’s the people who are just like body shaming saying, you look fat, you look ugly, you look like a monkey, you look like a gorilla.”

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif’s experience during the Paris Olympics is emblematic of how the internet can pounce when a female athlete doesn’t fit a predetermined mold. When Italy’s Angela Carini quit after 46 seconds during her and Khelif’s first Olympic match, later saying that Khelif’s punches hurt too much, the internet erupted, with public figures like Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling publicly questioning her eligibility. “The harassment campaign I faced at the Olympic Games was, in fact, the largest ever experienced by an athlete worldwide,” Khelif told ELLE.

British race car driver Katherine Legge said social media has been flooded with toxic messages since she made her NASCAR Cup Series debut in March.

No physical trait or difference is off limits. Paralympic swimmer Christie Raleigh Crossley survived two car accidents that left her with brain, neck, and back injuries. “There have been attacks on me for what people’s perception of my disabilities are, and that’s been widespread,” Crossley said. Commenters on a popular news swimming site often claim that she is faking her disability. “There is always hatred for me in there,” she added. “Why can’t things just be because of what we’ve accomplished? Why do we have to turn it into making us feel inferior? And that’s so much what it feels like both as a disabled athlete and as somebody competing in women’s sports—everything that you do gets minimized.”

Historically, media outlets largely ignored women’s sports. Social media presented a new opportunity for women athletes to connect with fans, share their stories, and market themselves. Today, professional female athletes are followed more than ever before—14 percent more than male athletes. There are clear benefits, but a greater online presence also makes athletes more vulnerable to harm. To gain followers, they’re encouraged to be authentic and share more about themselves. “Obviously every single week, people know where I am. They know where you’re playing. They see you on TV,” Stephens said.

The shrouded nature of social media enables fans to hurl insults in anonymity, often with limited consequences. “I can’t even tell you how many comments I’ve reported or profiles,” Crossley said. “I get messages back from Instagram saying, it didn’t violate, but you could just block the person. And it’s like, okay, but that doesn’t change the hatred that they’re putting out into the world about you.”

Some people tell players to just deal with it or get offline, placing the onus of the abusive behavior on the women, rather than the perpetrators. “I’ve had an FBI case, and I’ve been asked to go to trial, and it’s like, I just want to play tennis,” Stephens said. “You just want to play your sport and not be attacked and victimized. People just say to ‘live with it’ because it’s part of being a professional athlete, but no one should have to live like that.”

Athletes shouldn’t have to swallow this behavior and “the lack of immediate consequences only makes the issue of harassment worse,” Thomas said. Plus, just getting offline isn’t as simple a solution as it seems. “It’s a no-win situation for them,” LaVoi said. “So you shut it down to protect yourself, but then you’re also hurting potential revenue streams or your career longevity.” Many athletes attract corporate sponsorships and brand deals through their social media presence. “This isn’t to say that male athletes also don’t benefit from endorsements and corporate sponsorships, but when you’re making $100,000 a year, being able to get a corporate sponsorship means something different than if you’re making $10 million or $30 million,” said Cheryl Cooky, a professor and sports sociologist at Purdue University.

Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark received vulgar messages on X from a man who traveled to Indianapolis where she lives.

Social media isn’t the only thing enabling this toxic behavior. A recent report on online abuse in tennis found angry gamblers accounted for slightly less than 50 percent of 12,000 abusive posts directed at tennis players and officials between January and October 2024. “It’s the people who are betting, who are saying you’ve lost their life savings,” Stephens said. “They say they’re going to kill you, they say they’re going to find you, they’re going to come to your hotel, they’re going to rape you, they’re going to shoot your parents, they’re going to cut your arms off, they’re going to run you over with a car. I could go on and on.”

Proposition bets, also known as prop bets, are wagers tied to specific aspects of a game, like how many three-pointers a player makes. Such bets increased by over 250 percent in the WNBA last season from the prior year due to the “Caitlin Clark effect,” according to ESPN. “I’ve never been physically threatened about a bet before until this year,” Harrison told ELLE. Last year, NCAA President Charlie Baker called for an end to prop bets in college sports, which are permitted in around 20 states. “We believe that when bettors can’t gamble on college athletes’ individual performances, they’re far less likely to attempt to scrutinize, coerce, or harass student athletes,” Baker said in his testimony before the U.S. Congress in December. Even still, Stephens acknowledges banning betting is not a simple solution since gambling is “fueling our sport.” There’s not one simple reason for the harassment. “It’s a panoply of reasons that are all layered and intersecting,” said Stanford’s Tuakli-Wosornu.

Experts point to stricter media moderation, increased outspoken support from sports organizations and leagues, and strengthening existing laws against harassment, both online and in person, as measures that could help. In December of last year, the WTA published a Safeguarding Code to help address misconduct and create a safer community. Last month, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced the formation of a task force to combat online hate against the players, as well as increased security and dedicated mental health providers.

Fans also need to take responsibility and recognize that, despite their impressive athletic prowess, women athletes are human. “Participating in sports is what female athletes do—it is not the entirety of who they are,” the University of Michigan’s Ketra Armstrong said. “We keep pushing for change, but it’s not for me,” Stephens added. “It’s for the next generation of athletes who hopefully don’t have to deal with this, who don’t have to delete their social media or go into hiding when they lose—that’s who it’s really about.”