Skip to content

Friday, Jul. 9, 2021

Will a Mormon athlete named Rebecca Washington replace Sha’Carri Richardson on the US Olympic team?

Kaiyah Clarke, Lead Stories

no

This claim comes from a parody social media account. The runner actually replacing Sha'Carri Richardson on the Olympic team is Jenna Prandini, who came in fourth during the 100-meter trials.

Richardson was suspended during the U.S. Olympic team trials due to the discovery of marijuana-related substances in her system. She accepted the suspension, but it means she will not represent the United States in the Tokyo Olympics.

"Rebecca Washington" is not recorded as a runner in the U.S. Olympic trials. A photo in a social media post is a digitally manipulated image of Prandini, falsely identified in the post as Rebecca Washington.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

Learn More

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.