Daniel Teklahaimanot taking the polka dot jersey on the Tour was an historic event for the sport and Eritrea. But details of ugly racism inside the pro peloton soon emerged (Photo: Sirotti)
The emergence of more top quality black African riders is a fantastic addition to pro cycling. But it has unmasked some particularly ugly racism that the sport must tackle full-on immediately, writes Cillian Kelly.
Cycling is a sport of endurance which tests athletes to the limit of their physical capabilities. Any cyclist who has a natural ability to pump huge amounts of oxygen around their body is likely to excel.
Long distance running, from a physiological perspective, has similar demands to cycling.
A marathon, 42.2km in length, is far shorter than, say, the Tour de France. But it's logical to conclude the same physical attributes are desirable.
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Of the 100 fastest marathon times ever recorded, all but five of them have been clocked by black Africans.
There are many financial and infrastructural reasons why a general African presence within the sport of professional cycling has not materialised. But that is slowly changing.
And it's surely only a matter of time before the attributes which produce such astonishing runners can be translated to success in road cycling.
With the number of black riders in the peloton slowly increasing, the sport is finally having to face a problem which has hitherto been relatively absent - racism.
It has been widely reported that MTN-Qhubeka are the first African team to take part in the Tour de France.
This is not quite true as back in 1950 and 1951, when the race was contested by national teams, a team representing North Africa took part with riders from Algeria and Morocco.
But it is true that Daniel Teklahaimanot and Merhawi Kudus are the first black Africans to take part in the world's biggest race.
However, while Teklahaimanot was busy making history at the Tour last week by pulling on the polka-dot jersey as King of the Mountains, headlines were being made elsewhere for very unsavoury reasons.
The MTN-Qhubeka team was also taking part in the Tour of Austria where another of their black African riders Natnael Berhane claimed he was racially abused by the Belarusian rider Branislau Samoilau.
According to the Guardian newspaper, the MTN-Qhubeka team boss Doug Ryder said: “One of the riders from another team said to Natnael Berhane get out of the way you effing n*****. Just outrageous...
Natnael Berhane winning stage 3 of the Tour of Turkey in 2013 on his way to overall victory. Now with MTN-Qhubeka, as his team mate and fellow Eritrean Daniel Teklahaimanot was mopping up climbers' points at the Tour de France, Berhane suffered racial abuse at the Tour of Austria.
“Natnael was incredibly upset at the time, because it’s a terrible thing. They had a discussion, the team came and apologised, the rider came and apologised.
“Natnael has forgiven the guy. The UCI wanted to kick him out of the race, but Natnael said no it’s ok.”
Ryder also hinted that this was indicative of a more general attitude toward their team, as he said "one of the biggest teams in the world last year in the Tour of Spain, when we were trying to bring one of our riders to the front going into the mountains said ‘you guys don’t belong here, fuck off to the back of the bunch’".
It has also been reported some of the riders on the team were subjected to monkey chants earlier this year.
Racism has never been a primary issue within the professional peloton.
This is because for most of its existence, road racing has been contested almost exclusively by Caucasian men from Western Europe.
Even in the 1980s when cycling began the process of globalising itself, the new nations taking part were mostly those that had historically been conquered and inhabited by Caucasian men from Western Europe.
Racism hasn't been a primary issue in cycling because until relatively recently there hasn't been that many different races in cycling (so to speak).
Although not technically a 'race' (this is actually quite a difficult term to define), an exception to the Caucasian monopoly in the peloton came in the form of the Colombians. When they infiltrated the peloton in the 1980s they brought bigoted attitudes to the fore.
The Colombian writer Klaus Bellon wrote an article on his site alpsandes.com, which provides English translations of quotes from various Colombian riders about the attitude toward them of the double Tour de France winner Laurent Fignon.
For instance, Cochise Rodriguez is quoted as saying: “He was one of the ones who criticised our riders. He said we were drug addicts and treated us as such... As an athlete, he was amazing.
“But as a person he was mean spirited and disparaging”.
The great climber Lucho Herrera agrees, saying: “Fignon always spoke badly of us and always said that we were inferior to them (Europeans)”.
Merhawi Kudus, another Eritrean, is also riding the Tour de France. Aged just 21 years, he is the youngest rider in the race.
During that period when Colombians were winning many of the world's biggest races, they were constantly chastised for causing crashes. They were scolded for getting in the way and encouraged to stay at the back of the bunch where they couldn't do any harm.
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This is an attitude which has sadly continued into more recent years, borne out by the behaviour of some riders in the 2010 Tour de l'Avenir, as described by eventual winner Nairo Quintana to the Solo Ciclismo website:
"Things have not changed. This time we had problems with the French, the Australians and also Americans during the race.
“But we never allowed ourselves to be humiliated as they clearly wished had been the case. They didn't want us to be in the front of the peloton, they brake-checked us, they yelled at us, treated us badly, but we took them on and gave it right back.
“One day, a French rider grabbed Jarlinson Pantano's bike by the handlebar and threw him off his bike. So in retaliation, I went over and pushed this French rider into a ditch.
“In the end, however, it was him who asked us for forgiveness. At the end of that stage, the directors had to mediate the situation, so we wouldn't have any more problems.
“As the days went by, things calmed down. They saw that we were the strongest, and they learned to respect us.”
There have been fleeting occasions where the racist attitudes of riders have been tested due to the intermittent participation of black men in professional cycling.
Dating right back to the time of Major Taylor, an American track cycling phenomenon active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In Andrew Ritchie's book about Taylor, a black man from Indiana, he describes how Taylor left America due to racist attitudes towards him and headed for France where he was greeted with more of a 'curious' reaction.
But that was over a hundred years ago when attitudes and education about race relations were less healthy in general.
However, incidents of racial abuse continue.
More recently there was another incident at the 2014 Tour de France between the Swiss rider Michael Albasini and Kevin Reza, a black Frenchman who were in a breakaway together.
Albasini, unhappy with the work Reza was doing in the break, reportedly called Reza a 'dirty negro'.
Luis 'Lucho' Herrera was just one of a number of top Colombian riders to have spoken about the prejudice and negative stereotyping they suffered because they were not from those nations that traditionally dominated European cycling.
Albasini chalked it down to a matter of miscommunication, saying "You know there are many languages spoken in the bunch, I don’t speak English perfectly, I speak a little bit of French, not perfectly, he doesn’t speak my languages. That can happen, a misunderstanding".
But Reza's team manager at Europcar, Jean-René Bernaudeau was furious, going so far as to say “I do not tolerate racism. After doping it is the other scourge of the sport”.
It reminds us of a very similar incident which occurred in the world of football between the Uruguayan Luis Suarez and another black Frenchman Patrice Evra.
The same linguistic excuse was used by Suarez. But unlike Albasini, Suarez did not go unpunished. He was fined £40,000 and banned for eight matches.
In terms of the proliferation of black competitors, cycling and football could not be more disparate.
There are thousands of black athletes at the top of the sport of football and as such, racism is a massive problem.
So much so that there is an ongoing campaign to 'Kick racism out of football'.
Players are regularly banned for giving racial abuse and entire teams have been forced to play matches behind closed doors due to racial abuse dished out by their fans to opposing teams.
As the UCI continue their success in globalising the sport, the likelihood is that we will see more teams like MTN-Qhubeka muscling into the upper echelons.
And the number of black Africans taking part in the Tour de France will no doubt grow from the modest number of two at which it currently stands.
There are bigots and idiots in all walks of life and the professional peloton is no different.
As the number of black cyclists increases, unfortunately so will the number of incidents of racial abuse.
Cycling is in the privileged position where it is facing into a period of racial change in its own little microcosm in an era when education on the matter has never been greater.
It's up to everyone in the sport to ensure that problems faced by sports such as football are controlled and condemned.
Cycling is the world's most beautiful sport. Let's make sure we keep it that way.
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