M’sian Netizens are Attacking Japanese Olympic Rider Shinji Nakano After Crash with Shah Firdaus

During the final lap, Shah Firdaus was moving outside of Nakano, but both riders collided and took Carlin with them. Initially, Shah Firdaus was shown to have finished fourth but was relegated to the last spot, while no. 6. Nakano and Carlin were classified as "did not finish".

According to the commissaire, Shah Firdaus was at fault for the collision for "moving inside of the track when an opponent was already there".

However, some Malaysians have embarrassingly decided to flood the social media pages of other men’s keirin Olympic athletes with negative comments in retort.

X page @BitcoinMalaya wrote, “Malaysians (are) flooding the Japanese cyclist Nakano Shinji’s (Instagram page) now. Congratulations on embarrassing Malaysia on an international level.”

Some of the horrible comments included “Bongok” or “stupid”, “Go back to doing pornography,” and “If you’re not good at the sport, don’t play it and push back. It’s better if you play rugby so that I can body slam you”. Ironically, many of these comments were in Malay, which we assume Shinji doesn’t even understand. A quick check on Shinji’s Instagram page will also show you that there is a barrage of hateful and ridiculous comments.

Shah Firdaus’ younger brother, Ridwan Sahrom, has even had to come out to speak up about the issue, urging netizens to stop harassing Shinji. “In a keirin race, anything can happen. We can’t blame or judge what happened, whether it’s an accident or not."

Those on X also slammed those who made nasty comments, saying, “Well, what do you expect? They always criticise the Indonesians, but their behaviour is just like them.” Another said, “These Malaysian netizens are so embarrassing. Their behaviour is like that of a monkey. I don’t know when they will advance in their thinking if they always react like this.” One simply wrote, “Rempit mentality.”