FanDuel bans bettor after Gabby Thomas heckled at track event
1 of 2 | Gabby Thomas takes the baton from teammate Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the women's 4 X 400m relay during the 2024 Paris Olympics on August 10, 2024. Team USA won the gold medal. FanDuel has banned a bettor who claimed he made money on a parlay after heckling Thomas at a track event in Philadelphia last weekend. File Photo by Paul Hanna/UPI | License Photo
June 4 (UPI) -- FanDuel has banned an online bettor after he posted a video of himself heckling Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas at a Grand Slam Track event in Philadelphia last weekend, claiming "it made my parlay win."
The 28-year-old athlete on Monday posted on X: "This grown man followed me around the track as I took pictures and signed autographs for fans (mostly children) shouting personal insults. Anybody who enables him online is gross."
Thomas finished fourth in the 100-meter dash.
"FanDuel condemns in the strongest terms abusive behavior directed towards athletes," a FanDuel spokesperson said in a statement to ESPN. "Threatening or harassing athletes is unacceptable and has no place in sports. This customer is no longer able to wager with FanDuel."
The bettor, who goes by "mr100kaday" on X, describes himself as "The Track and Field Bully." He posted video of himself heckling Thomas ahead of the race with a screenshot of a $1,000 parlay bet on FanDuel.
The bettor called Thomas a "choke artist" and disparaged her husband for being White.
"I made Gabby lose by heckling her. And it made my parlay win," the man wrote on X.
A parlay bet is a type of wager where two or more individual bets or combined into a single wager.
FanDuel, which is owned by Flutter Entertainment, was established in 2009 to offer daily fantasy sports services nationwide. With sports betting approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in May 2018, they expanded into online and retail sportsbooks.
The bettor told USA Today he resides in Puerto Rico. He posted Monday on X: "Gabby thomas is a liar. Lying on a fan because they boo you and yell for you to lose to their favorite athlete. May Grand Slam track fail very very quickly."
Grand Slam Track, a professional track and field league, is conducting a "full investigation into the reprehensible behavior captured on video" in a statement to ESPN. "We are working to identify the individual involved and will take appropriate action as necessary."
Thomas, in a separate post on X on Monday, wrote: "Not the Slam results I hoped for, but when you race as often as I do, you can't win em all. On the bright side, this is the best I have ever ran at this at this point in the season!!"
Not the Slam results I hoped for, but when you race as often as I do, you can't win em all. On the bright side, this is the best I have ever ran at this at this point in the season!! I'm so so grateful to everyone who continues to support me on my journey, win or lose- rain or... pic.twitter.com/8RBPVPMaDY— Gabby Thomas (@itsgabbyt) June 2, 2025
Thomas shared on TikTok earlier this year that she was approached and confronted by the same group of men at airports in several cities. The men had stacks of photos for her to sign but turned aggressive when she declined, she said.
At the 2024 Parish Olympics, Thomas won gold in the 200 meters, the 4x100-meter and 4x400-meter relays. In 2021 at the Tokyo Olympics, Thomas earned bronze in the 200 meters and silver in the 4x100-meter relay. In the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Bucharest, Hungary, Thomas took a gold medal in the 4x100-meter relay.
Houston Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. said in May that his family was threatened on social media after a game. The threats were tracked to an overseas better by the Houston Police Department.
In a study commissioned last year by the NCAA, abuse by "angry sports bettors" is one of the most common types of harassment college athletes receive. They are at least 12% of publicly posted social media abuse.
Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow online sports betting statewide.
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