Selling sport as a tool for peace can create its own battlefield

High fives all round at Hamas high command. The triumphant clink of Gaza Cola tins pings across the bunker.

- Jonathan Liew

It's been a tough week for the lads, what with five of their members being killed in the Doha airstrike, but you've got to celebrate the little victories, yeah? And as they use what remains of their fragile satellite internet connection to refresh the Cyclingnews live blog for the final time, the Hamas Grand Tour Disruption Division (Vuelta Branch) can toast an operation executed to perfection: the successful mobilisation of more than 100,000 members of the Madrid battalion to force the curtailment of stage 21 of the Tour of Spain.

"They asked us to quit the Vuelta, but we did not surrender to the terrorists," said Sylvan Adams, co-owner of the Israel-Premier Tech team targeted by mass protests that disrupted several stages.

On Sunday, huge crowds of protesters in Madrid forced the race to conclude 27 miles short of the finish. And if the rancorous and chaotic last three weeks have taught us anything, it is the sheer number of terrorists that appear to have been operating within pro cycling, albeit many armed with nothing more lethal than energy gels.

So in the Adams imagination, presumably the numerous riders and teams who have been privately urging Israel-Premier Tech to withdraw from the race for the safety of the whole peloton were terrorists.

So too the prospective signings who, according to an Escape Collective investigation, are refusing to join because of the negative PR the team have been attracting, and the sponsors currently reconsidering their involvement.