The uneasiness… The organizers of the E3 GP, the Belgian event of the World Tour considered as the dress rehearsal for the Tour of Flanders, had to remove from their site a caricature which showed Wout Van Aert crossing the finish line on a bicycle without saddle, accompanied by a meaningful allusion to the LGBT+ community.
Indeed, if this caricature referred to the victory of the Belgian rider last weekend at the cyclo-cross in Benidorm (Spain), during which he lost his saddle at the start of the last lap, the link which is made behind with the LGBT+ community shocked public opinion.
The controversy particularly focused on the comments accompanying it: “The LGBTQ community is very enthusiastic,” one could read while, in the background, there were laughing spectators behind an LGBTQ flag, with an additional equivocal comment “ about van der Poel’s rainbow jersey, of course! “.
This publication was particularly strongly criticized by hundreds of Internet users who flooded the E3 Facebook page with negative comments. “What a sad level! », Also tweeted the Dutch journalist Thijs Zonneveld, a voice widely listened to in Belgium. On social networks, several dozen other Internet users, however, invoked the “Charlie spirit” to denounce the “ambient wokism in Flanders”.
Organizers already pinned down in the past
Faced with the controversy generated, the organizers of E3 however decided to delete the publication before apologizing. “We would like to apologize for the drawing we published yesterday. We certainly didn’t want to offend anyone. We will definitely discuss this internally,” they wrote.
In the past, the organization of this event which takes place around Harelbeke (West Flanders) had already been accused several times of sexism, notably in 2015. That year, they published the photo of (half of ) woman, from behind, lifting her dress and partially revealing her buttocks, with the message: “Who will pinch them in Harelbeke? “, in reference to the inappropriate gesture of Peter Saganwho pinched the buttocks of a hostess on the podium of the Tour of Flanders in 2013. High class…