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Olympian calls USA teammate 'soreloser' in deleted tweet

There's some Olympic-sized Twitter drama playing out on Team USA ahead of the opening ceremony.
Screen capture of Summer Britcher's Twitter feed on Thursday morning.

There's drama brewing in the Olympic Village, and Summer Britcher, York County native and second-time luge Olympian, had some thoughts.

Here's the background:

Yesterday, USA Olympic athletes chose who would be Team USA's flag bearer in the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics. It's a huge honor, and after voting, there was a tie between two athletes: Shani Davis and Erin Hamlin.

Davis is a speed-skater, a four-time Olympic medalist and five-time Olympian. He became the first black athlete to win a gold medal in an individual event at the Winter Olympics in 2006.

Hamlin, like Britcher, competes in luge. Her Sochi 2014 singles luge bronze medal was the first in American Olympic history.

According to procedure, a coin flip was used to pick the winner after a tie was reached. Davis lost.

Understandably upset, he took to Twitter to vent his frustration. He implied there might have been racial undertones to the outcome:

"I am an American and when I won the 1000m in 2010 I became the first American to 2-peat in that event. @TeamUSA dishonorably tossed a coin to decide its 2018 flag bearer. No problem. I can wait until 2022. #BlackHistoryMonth2018 #PyeongChang2018"

He posted the tweet early Thursday morning, Eastern Time.

Less than 2 hours later, Britcher weighed in a Tweet that has since been deleted:

"Wow. Very happy a #soreloser like this is not representing us tomorrow. Good luck in your events, good thing character doesn't play a part in your results."

Screen capture of Summer Britcher's Twitter feed on Thursday morning.

Britcher had more to say on the subject, retweeting a criticism of Davis ("Dude you are the definition of “I” in team.") and an NBC Olympics article profiling Hamilin's accomplishments.

Summer Britcher -- Luge. This is Summer's second Olympics. She finished 15th at the 2014 XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. She finished the 2017-18 World Cup season ranked third overall.

The honor of being Team USA's flag bearer is a big deal to athletes, in part because the choice is made by athletes themselves.

Here's how USA Today Sports explains the process:

During the selection meeting, each of the eight sporting federations nominated an athlete for consideration to carry the flag into the stadium on Friday. Federations cannot vote for their own nominee in the first round but are permitted to is subsequent rounds. Voting is done by one athlete from each of the governing bodies, and Olympic veteran Jonathan Garcia was the speedskating representative.

Britcher isn't known for holding back on Twitter. Later on Thursday morning, she used The Tonight Show's weekly hashtag "#whyimsingle": "I wanted to be free to tinder in the Olympic village."

Martin Rogers and Nancy Armour of USA TODAY SPORTS contributed to this report

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