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Ronde van Spanje: Tumult, Unrest, and Vingegaard Wins
There is one road cycling event which exceeds all others in general notability, Tour de France. This post is not about it, but about its Spanish counterpart, alike in the rules, mechanics, participants.
The 2025 edition of the Tour of Spain has just ended on Sunday, and boy was it memorable. Not for the cycling, but for what spilled over the side of the road, onto the course. Namely: Pro-Palestine protests. The stated cause of these protestors was the participation of the team "Israel - Premier Tech" (IPT), which despite its name, is not owned by Israel, but by a Jewish Canadian. (Israel has not exactly disassociated itself from the team, its PM expressing support to the team for not buckling).
Stage 5 was a Team Time Trial, where instead of all cyclists starting together, each team starts separately at regular intervals. Perfect situation for those targeting some team. Protestors were aware of this, and attacked IPT, whose finishing time would later be reduced by 15 seconds.
In Stage 11, when cyclists were about half an hour from the finish, shortened by 3km, it also was declared it would have no winner.
IPT would change jerseys, replacing "Israel" on them with the Star of David.
Stage 16 was altered, when the race was already on, by reducing its length by 8km.
Stage 18 was an Individual Time Trial, where each cyclist starts separately at set intervals, again perfect if one targets a particular cyclist. Race organizers sensed the danger, and shortened the course from 27.2 km to 12.2 km, the day before the stage.
Stage 21, the final one, was set to end in several circuits around Madrid, but that part was cancelled. The stage would have no winner, nor would it count for the Spanish Yellow aka Red Jersey.
Safety concerns also prevented podium ceremony from taking place. An IPT rider, American Matthew Riccitello becoming the leader in the Youth (or White Jersey) classification in stage 20, thus entitled to participate in the ceremony, probably exacerbated the perceived security situation. (The teams would go on to conduct their own ceremony in some parking lot, with the production value of an amateur race.)
Currently the position of PM of Spain belongs to the Socialist Party, and in the conflict between making his country look competent and his support for Palestine, chose the latter. Explicitly supporting the disruptors, (following the Spanish FM's calls for IPT to abandon the race a bit over a week earlier). The opposition opposed, as did Israel's FM and PM of Denmark.
Incidentally, the team at the center of this controversy on Sunday participated in a Canadian one-day-race, "Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal" under "IPT", instead of the full name. The race went smoothly, and was won by an American Brandon McNulty riding for the state-owned team "UAE Team Emirates - XRG".
Protestors having veto rights over sports participants, is something I oppose. It would be anti-pluralist. It would be like some manifestations cancel culture in being a variant of tortious interference. The audience wants to see the best riders, the best riders want to participate, but a politicized minority wants to come between them.
It reminds of some democrat-tinged critiques of the US political system, in that it has too many veto points, thus changes are hard to enact. It is, however, out of of all institutions the government, for which it makes the most moral sense to be veto-full as it is unique in wielding force against everyone. But such a veto-full system applied to all of society would be undesirable, as another person watching a cyclist riding for a team you do not like, does not make one coerced. This is why one should have less say in it.
EDIT: Cycling's governing body, UCI, has issued a statement. Most damning for Spain is the following paragraph:
If you look at the wars that became horrendous PR failures such as Vietnam, the French in Algeria, South Africa etc they have all been wars against a population that fundamentally has no reason to accept that order. The South Vietnamese government had no real claim of authority or legitimacy. The palestinian population has no reason to accept large number Eastern Europeans who moved there in the 90s having more rights than they do. They have no reason to accept having a country that is chopped in two parts of which the largest part isn't connected to the sea.
Israel is dropping like a rock in the polls and especially among young people. Palestine's best weapon is IDF soldiers with tiktok showing the world their true nature. Israel is not going to be viable as a state when the state is deeply unpopular in the rest of the world.
The completely incompetent looking one was the one who dragged Spain into the Iraq war. Competency is ensuring we don't have a Mediterranean state that creates a massive refugee crisis near Europe. A country that bombs six MENA countries in a week is an enemy of Europe.
Israel destroyed Gaza's catholic church and expects to be treated like a normal country. Does Israel treat countries that destroy synagogues the same way?
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
There is no inherent moral right to sovereignty. I'm sorry, you were lied to: the liberal international order is a spook. The breadth of your dominion is limited to the force of your arms - no matter how righteous or unrighteous you may be.
Did the last prophet, PBUH, not conquer peoples who had fundamentally no reasons to accept his order? Was not God on his side?
Similarly, the Israelites have made a conquest of Israel and Judea. Is God not on their side, now?
Possession is nine-tenths of the law. If the Palestinians want a change to the status quo, they should have cultivated an army to beat the IDF. Now they're beggars in the land of their forefathers with no hope of recovery. No, you're not getting your land back: the people with guns who took it aren't in any mood to just hand it over. It is for them to accept the reality of impotence and exile, as every people who lost wars before them have.
I assume you are jewish.
If you missed it there are strict rules of warfare that have been a part of western civilization for a long time. Catholicism has a view of war that is completely incompatible with the jewish view of war. Might is right with ethnic cleansing has not been applied in Europe.
The French on Haiti didn't want their land back. The Boer didn't want to live in a Bantu state. The occupation isn't long term sustainable and will fall apart. Palestinians have effectively ensured Israel is in a permanent state of crisis with an unsolvable public relations crisis.
Citation very much needed.
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