Van de Velde was booed and jeered while competing at the Games. Dutch Olympic officials went to lengths to protect him from the press during the event.
He has now opened up to Dutch publication NOS about his experience, admitting that while he anticipated backlash, the intensity of it took him by surprise. "I definitely had a moment of breaking down, both before the tournament and during it. But I thought ‘I’m not going to give others the power to bully me away or get me away’.
You can argue rehab vs punishment, but what you are being downvoted for, correctly in my view, is for comparing people who were convicted for crimes according to law directly with people who never did anything wrong in first place.
You may say that everyone who finished serving a sentence is equal to anyone else before the law, but that may not be the case in practice, there are lots of legitimate reasons for people to stigmatize e.g. if they personally don’t agree with the sentencing length.
That may or may not be fair, but it is what it is.
Stigmatizing someone just because of the way they look is just wrong, people may have tastes in who they want to hang out with, but it is not equivalent to naturally fearing an ex-convict.