WHY IS CYCLING SO WHITE?
There was much jubilation on the podium at Le Havre and on the streets of Asmara, Eritrea, after stage six of the 2015 Tour de France. Why? Because history was made when Daniel Teklehaimanot, then riding for MTN Qhubeka became the first black African to wear a leader’s jersey – the King of the Mountains polka-dot jersey. Although he lost it to Chris Froome after four days, this was a milestone and a hopeful sign in the move towards a more racially diverse professional peloton. That was a good year as the peloton also included Teklehaimanot’s team-mate and compatriot Merhawi Kudus, as well as Yohann Gène from Guadeloupe, riding for Europcar.
Since then, things have evolved steadily but very slowly and we are left asking the perennial question, why is cycle racing so white?
The roots of that lack of representation at the sport’s top level run deep and far back in time.
Nowhere is this more stark than at grassroots level in the UK, where Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) participation in bike racing is embarrassingly low. British Cycling no longer collects figures on ethnicity as standard due to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) concerns, but survey figures from a sample of
