Why Is Cycling So White?

The sport has always suffered from an under-representation of ethnic minorities, from grassroots to the top level of racing. Maria David investigates what is being done to increase BAME riders in cycling

- Maria David

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 4,614 riders who took part in any type of competitive cycling event in the last two years show that barely one per cent of the participants are from ethnic minorities. That compares with 13 per cent of the total UK population of 63 million people.

A report on diversity by rider and activist Andy Edwards, published last year on the BC website, made a series of proposals for what clubs could do to attract ethnic minority bike riders, but how far these have been adopted is yet to be measured.

History of failure