Morgan Mitchell was once told the cellulite on her thighs would make her run SLOWER

An Australian Olympic sprinter and plant-based athlete said she was once told that the cellulite on her thighs would slow her down on the track and she needed to maintain a certain weight to compete.

Morgan Mitchell was just 21 years old when she made her Olympic debut in the 400m sprint at the 2016 Rio Games.

Since then the vegan advocate has gone on to specialise in the 800m race, become the face of F45 and feature in the Netflix documentary Game Changers. 

Speaking on the Uninterrupted By Women’s Health Australia, Morgan said it was her mother who originally got her into track sport and she was naturally gifted at it. 

Since then the vegan advocate has gone on to specialise in the 800m race, become the face of F45 and feature in the Netflix documentary Game Changers

With that one sentence Morgan was able to shake off the body image issues of the few years prior and refocus her energy on competing

‘I gave it up for four years for netball with my sister but then I got bored of netball and decided to train for the 2016 Rio Olympics,’ she said.

But competitive training came with a price and Morgan said her superiors started to worry more about her weight than they did about her performance. 

‘I was getting BMI testing every three weeks. If I showed you what I looked like in 2017… I wouldn’t eat breakfast and then I’d train, eat a muesli bar and maybe half a salad roll for dinner,’ she said.

Morgan Mitchell (pictured) is on the front page of Women’s Health

While she would normally race at 62 kilos she was down to just 58 kilos the year after Rio, before ‘gaining all the weight back’ in 2018.

She noticed jibes of ‘you’re fat’ began and decided to take a three month holiday to Europe to distance herself from the toxic ‘abuse’.

But she didn’t want to give up the sport altogether, and when she returned to Australia, found herself a new coach in Elizabeth Matthews.  

‘The thing for me, when I was transitioning [from the 400m to 800m event] I got rid of my whole team. I found a new coach and was like, yep, she’s a female. My sport psych, yep, she’s a female. My manager, yep, female,’ she said.

‘All I’ve ever heard is, “You’re so skinny, you look great”, or “Oh, you’ve got cellulite on your thighs, you’re going to run slow.” Now that I’m reflecting on it, it just makes me laugh,’ she told the podcast

‘Women understand women. That’s one thing I found I just couldn’t get with men. They just didn’t want to know, they’d say: “Toughen up and move on, do this, do that.” You shouldn’t be complaining without understanding because they’d never been in a woman’s body. 

‘And my coach is awesome because she just goes, “if you come to training and hit my times that I want you to hit, I couldn’t care what you look like.”‘

With that one sentence Morgan was able to shake off the body image issues of the few years prior and refocus her energy on competing.  

‘All I’ve ever heard is, “You’re so skinny, you look great”, or “Oh, you’ve got cellulite on your thighs, you’re going to run slow.” Now that I’m reflecting on it, it just makes me laugh,’ she told the podcast.

‘It used to really eat away at me but now I’m like, how could people… how could you say that to someone? It blows my mind.’