Martin Solveig asks first female Ballon d'Or winner about "twerking" on stage
Reactions were quick to condemn his strange statement
French artist Martin Solveig was invited to this year's annual football Ballon d'Or award ceremony as a guest host, but incited outrage when he ruined the awarding moment for Ada Hegerberg by asking her if she knew how to "twerk" while she was on stage.
The Norwegian winner made history by becoming the first to receive the honor of Ballon d'Or's inaugural title as the best female player in the world. She beat 14 other candidates. Throughout the award's 62-year-long history, only men have been acknowledged for the best player award.
Unfortunately, as she graced the stage to receive her award, Martin Solveig asked her if she knew how to "twerk" on stage, to which she quickly responded "no" and turned her back on him.
Reactions both in the room and online were quick to condemn Solveig's comment and express how shocking his behavior was, especially during such a monumental moment for Hegerberg's inaugural win.
Martin Solveig has already addressed the incident, sharing a video on Twitter expressing his "amazement" with what he had been seeing in reactions online. "I, of course, didn't want to offend anyone," he continues. "This comes from a distortion of my English level and English culture level, which obviously is not enough, because I didn't mean to offend anyone and I didn't know that this would be seen as such an offense. Especially if you don't see the whole sequence in total when we ended up dancing on Frank Sinatra - Ada and myself. This was a joke... probably a bad one."
Martin Solveig went on to release a second statement the following day, December 4, via Twitter to publicly apologize and add context to the incident.
Read the full statement below.