Dave Hughes takes aim at trolls targeting Aussie marathon runner Michael Shelley

DAVE Hughes has blasted Australians for getting on their high horse and attacking someone who should be a national hero.

COMEDIAN Dave Hughes has taken aim at online trolls attacking Australian marathon runner Michael Shelley after he won gold at the Commonwealth Games.

Some on social media have accused Shelley of poor sportsmanship during the race when he ran past Scotland’s Callum Hawkins to take the lead after his rival had collapsed.

According to The Sunday Mail, Shelley looked like he was on the verge of tears on the weekend at a thankyou party for Games volunteers and according to sources, was devastated his gold medal has been tarnished because of the incident.

“It’s been a tough week,” he said.

The majority in the sports world have said Shelley has no case to answer, maintaining he had every right to continue running, and Hughes took aim at those keyboard warriors who thought differently.

“I’m angry, I’m really angry,” Hughes said on the Hit network’s Hughesy & Kate. “Trolls are trolls and haters are going to hate but sometimes they’ve just got to get their facts straight.

“He won the marathon but right now he’s devastated because online trolls are targeting him for his — according to them — heartless failure to stop and help the Scottish guy Hawkins who was in front but hit the wall and fell over.

“Shelley is so shattered he regards his gold medal as being tarnished.

“He’s not the Red Cross, alright. We’re not at Gallipoli.

“He’s not Simpson and his donkey.

“It’s anti-Australian, that’s what I’m saying.

“People are hypocrites.”

Michael Shelley went on to win gold.

Shelley spoke after the race about how he was battling his own physical demons and Hughes said had the Aussie stopped to check on Hawkins, his body may have given up on him.

“Absolutely he was struggling at the end,” Hughes said.

“If he had bent down to try and help this guy he may have ended up on the ground beside him. That’s possible isn’t it?”

Australian marathon legend Steve Moneghetti, who won gold at the 1994 Commonwealth Games, was on Hughes’ side.

“You’re angry and you’re not alone, I’m angry too. I wish a few of those trolls would get off their trolling and get out and put themselves in that position,” Moneghetti said.

“I just feel so sorry for Michael ... I was there, I saw him just as he finished and he was distressed, he was having enough trouble just holding it together himself.

“The first thing you’ve got to do in a marathon is beat the event. It’s got nothing to do with beating the competition or the opposition, you’ve just got to overcome the event because it is a traumatic event and at that stage in that heat you’re just focusing on yourself getting across.”

Moneghetti said Shelley would have been running at roughly 20km/h and in those conditions, wouldn’t have even realised what was happening around him, so should not cop an ounce of criticism.

“He would have had no understanding,” Moneghetti said.

“To be able to process that, he’d be past him and down the road so he’d have no idea what was happening when he ran past.”

Commonwealth Games officials came under heavy fire for failing to provide adequate medical assistance to Hawkins while he lay on the asphalt for several minutes after tumbling to the ground on the side of a Gold Coast bridge.

Read: World blows up over Hawkins treatment