{"id":200080,"date":"2025-10-14T19:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T19:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/200080\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T19:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T19:20:08","slug":"death-threats-insults-and-disqualification-as-an-emoji-in-strava-post-sparks-controversy-at-tour-of-mentougou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/200080\/","title":{"rendered":"Death threats, insults and disqualification as an emoji in Strava post sparks controversy at Tour of Mentougou"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second edition of the Tour of Mentougou descended into controversy after Spanish rider Mario Aparicio<\/a> (Burgos Burpellet BH) was ejected for making “inappropriate remarks on his personal social media platform” after the opening stage on Sunday, according to the race organisers, who are demanding a public apology.<\/p>\n

Aparicio uploaded his file from the first stage to Strava with “E1 tour mentougou” with two emoji: a pig and the Chinese flag.<\/p>\n

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What followed was a shocking storm of comments on his Strava profile and other social media platforms toward Aparicio, with users posting insults and even sending death threats.<\/p>\n

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The organisers moved to disqualify Aparicio on grounds that “the content of these remarks violated the spirit of sportsmanship, damaged the image of the race, and caused a serious negative impact”, according to their statement.<\/p>\n

While Aparicio’s team contends the post was an innocent dig at his teammate Carlos Garcia<\/a>, who won the first stage, according to El Mundo, <\/a>Chinese internet users who live in Spain noted that the word ‘cochino’ [pig] is often used as a derogatory term (eg. filthy pig) or simply to mean ‘dirty’.<\/p>\n

“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,” the Burgos Burpellet BH team said to El Mundo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Just an unfortunate coincidence. However, people saw it and took it out of context, misinterpreting it since the Chinese flag appeared next to it.”<\/p>\n

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While Aparicio left the country, his teammates continued to dominate the UCI 2.2-ranked race, winning the first and third stages of the three-day race and sweeping the overall podium with Cl\u00e9ment Alleno taking the victory, Garc\u00eda finishing second and Antonio Angulo in third.<\/p>\n

Alleno won the points classification, Garc\u00eda the mountains classification and Burgos BH also won the teams classification.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The second edition of the Tour of Mentougou descended into controversy after Spanish rider Mario Aparicio (Burgos Burpellet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-200080","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}