SixSixOne has been forced to apologise after posting a photo of a naked model on its social media accounts.

The image showed a woman wearing SixSixOne knee pads sitting on some steps. She was naked but the majority of her body was covered by her legs and the pads.

SixSixOne soon deleted the post after a wave of negative feedback and this morning posted an apology on its social media sites.

A screenshot of the company’s Instagram post

The apology read: “Sorry for any offence caused in yesterday’s post, we’ve removed the images from social media and also removed it from our image library and website. The image does not represent the brand opinion or help support the amazing women of our sport.

“We want EVERYONE to get stoked on our products, and sharing an out of date non-riding image of a model in our pads was an error. Happy Trails!”

SixSixOne claims the picture was made for a previous marketing campaign. It was re-posted yesterday as a test by from a sister company as it performed well in 2015. The post was apparently not planned or approved by the current SixSixOne marketing team but by the previous team that left the company in June

Sebastien Raymond, marketing director for SixSixOne said: “Obviously, this is a shame and a good lesson for a lot of people.

“The person in charge of our social media just followed what he was told, that’s a big mistake but that happened and I can only apologise for him. This not excusing everything but I promise you he is not the type of person who thinks this is the way to market a brand or get exposure, he is way more into riding images and great action shots to support our brands and products.

“There will definitely be no shooting of that type happening anymore with our new team and no more usage of such photos.”

The image was also used as part of SixSixOne’s New Year’s post but this has been removed too.

Twitter reacts

As you might expect, reactions on Twitter have not been positive: