Women's Ballon d'Or 2018: When Martin Solveig Asked Hegerberg if She Could Twerk

On December 3, 2018, Ada Hegerberg became the first winner of the Women’s Ballon d’Or following an exceptional season with Olympique lyonnais. On stage, as she went to collect her trophy, the Norwegian striker found herself at the center of an incident that would quickly make headlines worldwide.

Martin Solveig, French DJ and host of the evening, asked her in front of the audience at the Théâtre du Châtelet: “Do you know how to twerk?” Visibly uncomfortable, Hegerberg declined with a shake of her head before sharing a short dance to a Frank Sinatra track.

The sequence immediately sparked outrage on social media, with many voices denouncing a sexist remark directed at a top-level athlete at the precise moment of her consecration. Hours after the ceremony, Martin Solveig apologized on X. “I am a bit surprised and taken aback by what I’m reading on the internet, I didn’t want to offend anyone. This comes from a distortion of my level of English, which is obviously not sufficient. It was a joke, probably a bad joke, and I want to apologize to those I may have offended. Sorry,” he wrote.

Ada Hegerberg, for her part, chose restraint. When interviewed by the BBC, she explained that she did not feel personally offended at the time. “I didn’t really think about it at the moment. Honestly, I didn’t consider it sexual harassment,” she said. She also indicated that Martin Solveig came to find her backstage after the ceremony to apologize in person, and that he was genuinely sorry about how events had unfolded.

The incident nonetheless remains one of the most discussed episodes in recent Ballon d’Or history, often cited as revealing the biases that top-level female athletes continue to face, even during their moments of glory.