The Road Paved in Blood

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On Sunday evening, in a car park across from their team hotel in suburban Madrid, Jonas Vingegaard, Joāo Almeida and Tom Pidcock—the top three finishers at the 2025 Vuelta a España—stepped on to a makeshift podium of drinks coolers, and sprayed each other with champagne.

It wasn’t quite the picturesque podium finish that any of them had expected after three weeks of chaotic racing fractured by widespread pro-Palestinian protests.

The Vuelta is an annual multi-stage road cycling race primarily held in Spain that is part of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) World Tour. Along with the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia, the Vuelta is one of cycling's prestigious events. However, the 2025 edition was characterized by multiple pro-Palestine protests which caused crashes that forced two riders to quit the race, several changes to stage finishes and distances, and the abandonment of the final stage of the event.

These protests did not emerge from nowhere. Their focus was the presence of Israel-Premier Tech, a team funded by Canadian-Israeli philanthropist Sylvan Adams known as the "self-appointed Ambassador at large for the State of Israel." At a time when Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza continues to dominate headlines, campaigners seized on the Vuelta’s visibility.

The protesters insisted that there is no clean separation between cycling’s landscapes and its political reality. This remains true for the UCI’s upcoming Road World Championships, which is being held in the Rwandan capital of Kigali for the first time.

Billed as a historic moment for African cycling, the event marked a major step in the sport’s globalization, offering a new generation of African riders an opportunity to showcase their talent. However, the event will also mark a crowning moment for Rwanda’s longtime autocrat Paul Kagame, who has effectively used sports to legitimize his rule