Italian Bike Race's Move To Israel Throws Up Questions For Arab Teams And Potential For Détente
SOURCE: FORBES
BY DOMINIC DUDLEY
One of the world’s most prestigious bike races, the Giro d’Italia, will visit Israel as part of its schedule next year, throwing up a potentially thorny problem for two of the teams that will be expected to take part and which are sponsored by the Bahrain and UAE governments.
At an event in Jerusalem on September 18, the race organisers unveiled details of the opening stages of next year’s race. Israel will host the first three stages of the event, starting with a 10.1km individual time trial in Jerusalem on May 4, 2018, which will finish close to the walls of the Old City. The following day, Stage 2 will take the riders on a 167km route from Haifa to Tel Aviv, while the third stage will cover 226km from Be’er Sheva across the Negev desert to the Red Sea resort of Eilat.
Borut Bozic, a cyclist for Bahrain-Merida, cools down following the finish of Stage 3 of the 2017 Tour de France, at Longwy on July 3, 2017.The Giro is one of the three ‘Grand Tours’ that comprise the pinnacle of profession cycling – the other two events are the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España. Although these races have developed a habit of having opening stages in other countries – a powerful marketing exercise for team sponsors – next year’s Giro d’Italia will be the first time a Grand Tour has started outside Europe.
For Israel it is a useful opportunity to put some of the country’s major tourist sites in front of a large global audience. Speaking at the launch event, Israel’s Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin described the Giro d’Italia as “a spectacular race which will showcase Israel’s amazing landscape to hundreds of millions of viewers in nearly 200 countries across the world.”
Pedals And Politics
However, the event will is potentially awkward for the two Gulf teams, Bahrain-Merida and UAE Team Emirates. At present Israel does not have formal diplomatic relations with any of the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council – the group of Arab states that includes Bahrain and the UAE, as well as Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Some of these Gulf states have been edging closer to Israel in recent years, although the relationship remains clouded in secrecy. The nascent cooperation is believed to be centred around defence and security cooperation and the perception of facing a common threat from Iran.
Dominic Dudley is a freelance journalist with almost two decades’ experience in reporting on business, economic and political stories in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe.
