Media

19 April 2024, Hong Kong – On 14 April, during the Beijing International Long-Distance Running Festival 2024 - Beijing Half Marathon Men's event, the performance and result of an athlete sponsored by Xtep led to controversy. Regarding this matter, Xtep sincerely expresses our heartfelt apologies to the vast number of runners and consumers who have been supporting Xtep.

In preparation of the event, Xtep had invited four foreign athletes to serve as pacers for Chinese athlete He Jie. Xtep staff made errors during the registration process by not marking their pacer identity, leading them to participate as invited athletes, resulting in a discrepancy between their identity and actions.

We bear significant responsibility for this incident and fully accept the penalties imposed by the organizing committee. We are committed to serious introspection and rigorous evaluation, and will take stringent measures against all personnel involved. We will deeply reflect on this incident and draw valuable lessons from it, undertake a comprehensive review of all procedures and systems related to race operations, and make timely corrections to ensure that such incidents do not occur again in the future.

We sincerely appreciate the attention, criticisms, and suggestions from the media friends and netizens in the past few days. It demonstrates their care and deep affection for Xtep, for which we are sincerely grateful. Moving forward, Xtep will continue to welcome public oversight, steadfastly uphold the principles of fairness and integrity in sports, diligently work to reinforce a positive athletic climate, and support the development of road running in China.