Twitter is a great way to keep up with your favorite Olympic athletes as they give insight into their sports and life in the Olympic Village, and occasionally spray racist vitriol, as Swiss soccer player Michel Morganella did on Monday, getting himself expelled. After an inappropriate missive on Monday in which he described South Koreans as a "bunch of mentally handicapped retards," the Swiss team sent Morganella home. 

Morganella is now the second athlete of these Games to cost himself a place on his team for being racist and unsportsmanlike on Twitter. (Voula Papachristou is currently Greece's Triple Jump champion was punished last week for making a joke about Africans.) After a dismal match against South Korea on Sunday, in which he was "booed throughout the match against the Koreans after he picked up an 'injury' in a phantom challenge with Arsenal forward Park Chu Young," according to the soccer blog 101 Great Goals, Morganella apparently snapped. He wrote: "I want to beat up all South Koreans! Bunch of mentally handicapped retards!" He later apologized on his account, which has now been deleted. But it was too late, and on Monday, his team stripped him of his Olympic accreditation and kicked him off. Hopefully this is the last such incident of these Games, and we can go back to briefly getting fascinated by sports like badminton in peace.

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at amartin at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
Adam Martin