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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:
Interesting how your comment is about a cycling team with no actual ties to Israel and the inability/unwillingness of the Spanish gov’t to protect and sanctify the Olympic spirit, in the face of dissent. yet the cavalcade below doesn’t seem to be related to the Vuelta at all.
I am glad you mentioned this. I watched he entire race live, and it was surreal to just watch this fall apart.
I was actually a bit surprised at the lack of disruption during the TdF - there were Palestine flags here and there but nothing like what we saw in Spain.
Perhaps too many gendarmes willing to engage in a little rompa cabezas.. err, casse las têtes
Aren’t Spanish cops known for being more skull cracking and thuggish, not less?
In general I thought so, but I think the French are really serious about the TdF, in a way the Spanish aren't about the Vuelta.
That’s possible. Also possible- policia armada is being handicapped for Spanish political reasons(AIUI it’s actually a thorny political issue in Spain and their government is propped up by a coalition that includes some of their equivalent of far left wackadoodles) or Spain just wants to give Palestinians a platform in a way France doesn’t.
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