The protesters at this year's Vuelta a España, many thousand in number, demanded that Israel-Premier Tech (IPT) be shut down. The team, as owner Sylvan Adams put it, refused to cower, and the UCI, cycling’s governing body, rushed to their defence. Yet the unstoppable force of a protest movement that has swelled across the world has finally shifted the immovable object: Israel-Premier Tech have become NSN Cycling, owned by an international sports and entertainment company, and backed by Swiss investment bank Stoneweg.
A fragile ceasefire is now in place in Gaza, but does the pause in hostilities – and IPT’s forced rebrand – signal the end of one of cycling’s most fraught tangles with geopolitics? Or does it mark a new era in which protest and public pressure exert greater influence on cycling, blurring the line between politics and sport as never before?
