China placed fourth behind bronze medallist Canada with 14-year-old Ai Yanhan swimming the second leg.
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McDonald, the University of Toronto swim coach, stated on a hot mic: “That little 14-year-old from China dropped the ball, baby”. He continued with his mean-spirited sarcasm against the swimmer, saying she was “too excited, went out like stink and died like a pig …” The idiot didn’t realize they were still on the air’.
CBC apologized to Twitter users soon after. You represent the CBC and Canada and make us all sound like a bunch of racists.
“#Byron MacDonald# should be dismissed and @CBC Olympics stop use ctrl C + ctrl V, we need a real apology”, wrote a Chinese Twitter user, calling MacDonald’s comments “racist and insulting”.
The network was also quick to apologize and released a statement.
On Thursday afternoon, MacDonald apologized on-air and attempted to qualify his remark by stating he didn’t mean for it to be construed as a personal attack.
The CBC is under fire for an offensive statement that was uttered into a live microphone after its broadcast of the women’s 4x200m swimming freestyle relay on Wednesday.
The term “died like a pig” appears to be part of Canadian swimmers’ slang, with several other competitors such as Sarah Mehain (“I went out for it and died like a pig”) and Morgan Knabe (“I went out like a bat out of hell, and then I died like a pig”) using it in the past to describe their own efforts. “We moved quickly last night to apologize to our viewers on-air and to our followers on Social media”, CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson told Postmedia in an email Thursday morning.
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With Michael Phelps steadily pulling clear of American rival Ryan Lochte in the 200m individual medley final, CBC commentator Elliotte Friedman called the race as though the latter had instead stormed in front. Needless to say, there was no disrespect intended and I’m very sorry’. “It was an unfortunate choice of words-we’re sorry it happened”, CBC said on Twitter.
