I tweeted this out last night. Lolo blew it. She was trying to be funny, she didn’t know who she was tweeting with. I get in good-natured tweet battles all the time. It’s fun. That’s all she was doing… and she blew it because she didn’t know who he was. That’s it. End of story. Awful timing. He had no hard feelings… she felt bad. Now, every website on the planet is blowing her up saying she’s an idiot, blah blah blah. Should she have known who he was? Sure. He’s a huge national story and an inspiration to millions. But… she didn’t. So she had to release a statement to Yahoo Sports stating:
“I’m truly sorry if I offended anyone by my tweet. When Eric challenged me to a race earlier all I knew was that he was a football player, but certainly had no idea he had become paralyzed from a football injury. I thought I was tweeting in good fun like I always do with the many athletes who challenge me to races.”
It sucks. But it wasn’t on purpose. So back off of Lolo. It could’ve happened to any of us. I get the feeling that tonight, every writer/blogger out there saying that Lolo is an awful person for this is going to encounter a scenario such as this: Talking about Lolo saying, “I’d jump off a cliff if I said something that stupid!” to someone whose mom actually jumped off a cliff.
-bp
[image via @cjzero]