An Online Abuse Study commissioned by the world governing body and released today found that five per cent of the posts deemed abusive not only warranted intervention from the platform but produced cases where World Athletics "is considering further sanctions on these individuals including sending evidence and reports to national law enforcement agencies."

The study, which follows a similar effort undertaken during last year's Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, monitored the Twitter and Instagram accounts of 461 athletes from July 10 to August 1 this year, and identified 59 abusive posts from 57 different authors.

Of these, 36 per cent were not of a level meriting external action, 59 per cent were abusive enough to require action on the social media platform, and the remaining five per cent may be subject to legal proceedings.

"Sixty per cent of all detected online abuse was sexual or racial in nature with racism comments depicted in the form of offensive deployment of the N-word, and in the use of monkey emojis against black athletes," the report says.

"This 'weaponisation' of emojis as part of racist abuse is now common online.

"When abuse types are broken down by gender, half of all abuse targeting female athletes was of a sexualised nature.

"Abuse targeting male athletes tended to include general slurs, with a significant proportion (29 per cent) of racist abuse also detected."

Just under 60 per cent of the abusive messages were received by women, and sexual and sexualised abuse - "overwhelmingly targeted at female athletes" - made up more than 40 per cent of all detected abusive posts.

Twitter was the preferred channel for abusers, accounting for almost 60 per cent of detected abuse.

Two athletes - one male, one female - received almost 40 per cent of detected abuse between them.

The results of this study are disturbing but it's important that we know where and how our athletes are being abused on social media so we can take steps to protect them and prevent future occurrences," World Athletics President Sebastian Coe commented.

"There is no place for abusive behaviour in our sport and we need to send a clear message to those who think athletes are fair game for this mistreatment.

"We won't hesitate to sanction individuals who abuse our athletes where we can identify them.

"We have a duty to safeguard our athletes to the best of our ability and that is why we have developed robust safeguarding policies to set the standards we want to see in our sport."

The report also found that abuse "tended to be driven by events outside of competition - athletes were targeted over controversies associated with athletics, but not necessarily driven by results in the stadium."

However, for Britain’s Tokyo 2020 pole vault bronze medallist Holly Bradshaw, abusive comments were drawn from something that happened within the stadium.

She received numerous abusive tweets after she had had to make a tearful withdrawal from qualifying in Eugene due to injury after her pole snapped during a warm-up vault and she landed on the back of her neck in the take-off pit.

She told insidethegames: "There were just comments as to, 'I only fell from two feet, why didn’t I get up?'

"'Oh, it’s a squidgy mat, why couldn’t she carry on?'

"Almost implying like I was playing on it, being a bit of a drama queen.

"In terms of the World Athletics report, a lot is about sexism and racism.

"I’ve definitely experienced sexism in the past, but on this occasion it was very much relating to my performance.

"Mostly people were having a go because I withdrew after the pole snap.

"The thing that’s frustrating was the naivete towards that.

"I absolutely wanted to carry on.

"It's a World Championship qualification and I'd prepared for this moment for the whole year.

"I'm not the kind of person to shy away from that and if I could have gone on I absolutely would have, but in terms of emotionally but also physically I was actually hurt."

During Tokyo 2020, the company operating on World Athletics' behalf, Threat Matrix, analysed almost 250,000 posts targeting a representative sample of 161 athletes and officials or media personalities.

The process detected 132 posts flagged as abusive from 119 authors, targeting 23 athlete accounts.

"Since the launch of the Safeguarding Policy, World Athletics has taken a number of steps to ensure athletics becomes a sport free from harassment and abuse and has created a number of resources for Member Federations and other stakeholder groups to ensure this is the case in all regions of the world," the report added.

"All Safeguarding materials are available in seven languages and provide clear steps for Member Federations to be able to implement their own Safeguarding Policies by the end of 2023 and are accessible via a newly-launched dedicated Safeguarding section on the World Athletics website."