A Spanish professional cyclist has been disqualified from a race in China for an “inappropriate” post on social media.
Mario Aparicio, riding for Burgos Burpellet BH, was competing in the 2.2 ranked Tour of Mentougou where after finishing the first stage, he captioned his Strava file with two emojis of a pig and a flag of China.
A social media storm then erupted as Chinese social media criticised Aparicio for the “derogatory” post.
Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that the word for pig – ‘cochino’ – slang meaning dirty or filthy – was first picked up on by Chinese people living in Spain, and the subsequent outrage was based on the association between the word and Aparicio’s caption.
The organisers of the Tour of Mentougou subsequently announced Aparicio’s disqualification from the race saying that Aparicio’s post “violated the spirit of sportsmanship, damaged the image of the race, and caused a serious negative impact.”
But the team defended Aparicio’s post, which have since been deleted from his Strava account, saying: “Mario posted the pig emoji as a joke toward his teammate who had won the stage, something without malice and unrelated to the Chinese people.
“Just an unfortunate coincidence. However, people saw it and took it out of context, misinterpreting it since the Chinese flag appeared next to it.”
Aparicio, a 25-year-old professional, has spent his entire career with the ProTour Burgos team and made his Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta a España last month where he appeared in several breakaways and finished 91st overall.
He previously took his only professional victory in China at the Tour of Qinghai Lake last in 2024 where he also won the Mountains Classification. He has also won the mountains jersey at the Tour de Langkawi and finished in the top-10 overall at the Presidential Tour of Turkey.
It is not the first time that riders have been removed from races in China. In 2023, Intermarché-Circus-Wanty removed Madis Mihkels and Gerben Thijsen the day before the start of the Tour of Guangxi after Thijsen filmed his teammate making a racist ‘slanted eyes’ gesture on Instagram.
Both the team and the riders subsequently apologised and donated to the team’s junior academy who they mentored.
Despite Aparicio’s disqualification, Burgos Burpellet BH dominated the three-day race, taking a clean sweep of the overall podium and winning the points, mountains and team classification. Clément Alleno won the race ahead of Carlos Garcia Pierna and Antonio Angulo.
6 thoughts on “Pro cyclist kicked off race in China after backlash over pig emojis in Strava post”
“…violated the spirit of
“…violated the spirit of sportsmanship, damaged the image of the race, and caused a serious negative impact.” The race’s comms manager shall be sent to reeducation for omitting the perennial sentence “deeply hurt the feelings of the Chinese people”. On the flip side, China loves pork as per the 2021 pork consumption per capital – around 37 kg in Mainland China, 52 kg in Hong Kong, and 61 k in Macau.
MaxiMinimalist wrote:
Is this supposed to be some sort of killer point about hypocrisy? Many British people like a bit of bacon too I believe but call someone a pig and they’ll be offended.
I find it highly unlikely
I find it highly unlikely this was a “coincidence”, with the post intended as a jibe against his porcine teammate. How thick is he, or indeed, how thick does he think we are?
If you detest the CCP so much that you can’t keep your gob shut, then don’t go to race there. Simple.
Says you with zero evidence
Says you with zero evidence except your own biases.
For this to be a sucessful deliberate insult he’s have had to known that Mandarin is full of pig insults, which is pretty unlikely.
Cock up beats conspiracy every time.
You’d be surprised how fast
You’d be surprised how fast you pick up bad language when you are in a country. You will always meet someone who just can’t wait to teach you some of the local slang. I think it unlikely for anyone to spend more than a day in China w/o picking some up. Now as for what this rider meant, or who he was joking with, that is anyone’s guess.
Good point – there has been
Good point – there has been at least one example on this very forum of some self-advertised non-native speaker who went from “no speak English” to fluent trolling in about a week. (Albeit they had a strong aversion to swearing IIRC which in their view was far worse than racism, antisemitism or running people over).
Don’t really agree with your explanation on this case – unless you’re suggesting that he picked up Chinese texting / emojii habits rather than merely hearing something and repeating it (which i agree is common, been there…). As SS says it would have involved further steps including understanding.