It has been a sweltering Tour. In a warming world, in which Europe is heating at twice the global average rate, it could hardly have been otherwise.
With water use restrictions in 92 of France’s 96 mainland departments, and the national news full of forest fires, dry rivers, depleted soil and disappearing aquifers, climate change is everyday conversation among ordinary Frenchmen and women, including, of course, Tour fans. Three stages have had to be reorganised, and even Tadej Pogačar, normally so softly spoken, has said, “If I had [the] power, I’d change the whole calendar. I would not race in July and in August.”
On one thing, there is no controversy. To avoid even higher temperatures in future, we need to phase-out fossil fuels, and quickly. But fossil fuel sponsored sport has become the twenty-first century’s opium of the people. We have just watched a World Cup festooned with sponsorship by the world’s biggest oil company, Aramco. The Tour de France offers much the same thing: a mobile, daily, four-hour advert for petrostates, oil and petrochemicals companies.
Understandably, few riders dare speak out, or even publicly acknowledge the awkwardness of their silence. Curious to know what they really think, I was introduced to a male pro, no stranger to winning, on a team with a fossil fuel sponsor. He agreed to talk on condition he could remain nameless, given that his comments could damage his prospects of future employment in the sport. I agreed to his terms, and I started by asking if the subject of fossil fuel sponsors ever came up in conversation with other riders.
“A lot of people from [the Armstrong era] are still in the sport. Silence is second nature to them.”
He told me, “We’re out training and racing even on the hottest days so you’d think it would, but it rarely does. You’re never told not to talk about it, but you self-censor without even realising it. Maybe it dates back to the Armstrong era, when no one spoke about doping. A lot of people from those years are still in the sport. Silence is second nature to them.
“As every cyclist knows, fossil fuel-based sponsors have raised team budgets and riders’ wages. The general feeling inside the sport is that criticisng the companies who fund it is a bit like what used to be called spitting in the soup. I’d go further and say that, concerning the climate crisis, and professional cycling’s addiction to sponsorship from oil companies, airlines and car manufacturers, there is a rule of silence, as deeply rooted in cycling culture as the old omertá about doping.”
The entire sport is overflowing with oil company and petrostate sponsors.
“At the Tour de France, they are ten a penny, but their reach in cycling is deeper than you might imagine. It’s not just teams, it’s events, federations, everything. It’s almost imposible to avoid becoming a billboard for them.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“I think it plays on ignorance too. Cycling is one of the most ignorant sports in the world. It’s so demanding that there isn’t much space for extra-curricular thinking. Young riders just want to leave school and go pro. They don’t have a wider perspective: they aren’t thinking about socioeconomics, and there are fewer spots in procycling that in most professional sports.
“Most riders don’t even know what their sponsors do, especially in the lower echelons of the sport where you get fifteen sponsors on the jersey. It’s probably true in the WorldTour too. I reckon more than fifty per cent of the bunch wouldn’t know who Picnic or XRG or CMA CGN are.”
From my interviewees’ perspective inside the sport, today’s cycling sponsors have broken the old relationship that bound them to wider society.
He told me, “Ordinary people are very concerned about climate change, but cycling doesn’t engage with them. In the old days, sponsoring a team or a race was a form of advertising. It was part of a conversation. The sponsors of many of the top-end teams don’t care what the wider world thinks. And cycling’s leadership is ready to sell its soul for petrodollars. It’s completely rudderless. For that reason, the sport is way behind the general public.”
“The sponsors of many of the top-end teams don’t care what the wider world thinks.”
Aware that he could be accused of hypocrisy, my interviewee conceded, “You’re probably asking, if I’m so concerned about climate change and carbon emissions, why do I ride for a team sponsored by a fossil fuel producer? Well, in case you were wondering, I’m not Tadej Pogačar. Cycling is a small sport, and there are so few opportunities, you’re not in a position to turn contract offers down. If there were more options, you could go to a team that shares your ethics. As it is, if you want to be a professional cyclist and you’re not the best in the world, you can’t pick and choose.”
In any case, riding professionally is almost impossible without leaving a huge carbon footprint. “The race calendar is totally international and all year round, and we fly everywhere, sometimes by ridiculous routes. The influx of Asian sponsors will mean even more air miles. I remember a one-day race in a long-haul location where a French rider on a small team flew for 30 hours to spend three days on the ground–madness from every angle: rider performance, ecological impact and cost. Teams with more money at bigger races do even more brain dead stuff. If they rubbed even two brain cells together they could save money and massively reduce your impact. A sustainability officer alongside the logistics people would make a lot of sense.”
However, there are signs of change inside the peloton, he told me.
“The conversation is happening more and more. The Tour has been affected by forest fires. The Giro, where it’s normally snowing, was held in 30 degree heat.”
Even so, he told me, “Riders further down the food chain won’t say anything. In a team scenario, when you want to be taken seriously, people just laugh. Your DS would take you to the side and say, come on, this is our sponsor, you can’t be saying that kind of stuff. But maybe at the top level, where they are a bit more comfortable in their salary and job, riders will begin to speak out.”
