One domestic road race can produce equivalent emissions to flying from London to New York and back, twice: the why and how of more sustainable events

Tour de France support team vehicles emerging from Blackfriars underpass in front of huge crowds.

As a means of transport, cycling has a low environmental impact, but the same can’t be said for mass cycling events. While studying sustainability at university, I heard professional road racing described as “a traffic jam with a bunch of cyclists in the middle”, which set me thinking about my own road racing. Although an amateur race generates nowhere near the emissions of a WorldTour race, the hundreds of events nationwide each year do have a cost on the environment. So what can we do to reduce our emissions?

Assessing the environmental impact of sport is the world I live and breathe. I’m the sustainability officer at Exeter City Football Club and an MSc student in Exeter University’s flagship Global Sustainability Solutions programme. I’ve been a competitive road cyclist for several years but now focus on gravel racing. When I started working in this arena, I knew that, if I was going to avoid hypocrisy, I’d have to address the emissions generated by cycling.