THE RACE TO NET ZERO

UCI president David Lappartient speaks in-depth and exclusively to Chris Marshall-Bell about his plans to halve emissions and make cycling carbon-neutral by 2030

- Chris Marshall-Bell

David Lappartient bangs his fist on the table. The president of the UCI, the sport's governing body, wants to hammer home his message. "We have a green tool: the bicycle," he says. "We have to be green ourselves."

As the world grapples with the climate crisis, cycle racing - like every other aspect of life - is caught in its crosshairs. Racing in summer is becoming so hot that this August a stage of the Tour de l'Avenir was forced to start in the morning for riders' safety. Other races have been affected by flooding, landslides and high winds that seem certain to be a direct consequence of a changing climate.

Yet with this as the backdrop, cycling continues to regularly fly its riders around the world, let teams double their vehicle fleets, and do very little to address a carbon footprint that is seemingly rising year-on-year.

Lappartient knows he has to address the situation. The head of the sport since 2017, last year he released the UCI Agenda 2030 mission statement in which he sets out how all of the sport's stakeholders - teams, races and the UCI themselves - must reduce their carbon emissions by 50% by 2030, and be carbon neutral in the same year (see boxout).

"There is no other choice but to change," the Frenchman tells Cycling Weekly in an exclusive interview.

Which is a good place to interject: on a scale of 1-10, how would he grade cycling's current sustainability? "Four," he shoots straight back. "We are not at the level we should be. We are on the right path, but our starting point was not good and there's a lot of effort to do. Our ambition is really high, to get a score of 10, and we're getting better. We've started sharing goals, a vision, but I think we have to develop more, and it has to be a truly common goal for everybody."