Caught in the storm of discrimination, France's 4 gold "flying fish" ignores the handshake of the Chinese coach Gu Ailing "blessing" in one second and "deleted comments" in the next second!
At Paris 2024, France swimmer Léon · Marchand made history by becoming only the fourth swimmer in Olympic history to win four individual medals at a single Olympic Games. However, a recent video that went viral on social media has plunged the gold medalist into controversy.
In this video, Marchand is accused of discriminatory behavior towards a Chinese coach.
In the video, it can be seen that at the medal ceremony of the men's 200-meter individual medley, the Chinese coach stretched out his hand to signal to shake hands with Marchand, but Marchand lowered his head to avoid the barrier and walked straight to the podium without responding to the handshake.
The move sparked strong discontent not only from Chinese netizens on Weibo, but also from foreign platforms to accuse him of inappropriate behavior.
Due to the increasing criticism from Chinese and foreign netizens, Ma Shang also explained on August 3 that he was inattentive at that time, thinking that Coach Zhu Zhigen was helping him lift the rope, but did not realize that it was a handshake.
He also said that he went to the rest area of the Chinese team afterwards, hoping to explain the situation to Coach Zhu Zhigen in person and apologize, but because Coach Zhu was not in the rest area, he could only convey this clarification through other members of the Chinese team.
Despite this, Chinese netizens did not buy this explanation, and the relevant comment area was full of remarks such as "obviously sophistry, obviously ignorance", "the arrogance of the France is really in the bones", questioning whether Ma Xiang's apology was sincere.
In addition, according to sports media reports, because Ma Shang and Gu Ailing jointly endorse an international luxury brand, after Ma Xiang won the gold medal in the 200-meter medley, Gu Ailing posted a picture on Instagram to celebrate, and commented "unbelievable" on his news to send blessings.
After the above incident, Gu Ailing immediately deleted the comments and suspected of deleting the previous interaction records with Ma Xiang.
In fact, it is not the first time that the Chinese swimming team has encountered such a situation in this Olympic Games. In the men's 100-meter freestyle final of the Paris Olympics two days ago, Chinese teenager Pan Zhanle broke the world record held by himself in 46.40 seconds to win the championship and won the first gold medal for the Chinese swimming team in this Olympic Games.
In an interview with Chinese media reporters, he disclosed the experience of the Chinese swimming team being treated disrespectfully in Paris. "I greeted Australia teammate Chalmers below before the game and he ignored me. When Alexie was training in United States, he rolled in the pool and splashed directly on our coach."
Despite Marchand's brilliant results in the pool, the incident undoubtedly cast a shadow over his Olympic journey.