While other sports have seen their stars front campaigns and ‘take the knee’ in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, nothing of the sort has happened at professional cycling’s biggest event – and now Kevin Reza, the only black rider competing at the Tour de France this year, is keen to see cycling show solidarity with the movement as he explores ways to voice his personal support.
While cycling isn’t without its scandals of course, the issue of race isn’t one that rears its head as regularly as it does in sports such as football; but as Reza’s status as the Tour’s only black rider indicates, this could be as much to do with the fact that there are so few non-white cyclists in the first place. There are also very few cyclists who have profiles high enough to get their voices heard by very large audiences.
Speaking to Reuters, Reza said: “It’s a shame. You can see the big names in sport giving themselves the means to speak, to make noise, to show their solidarity with this movement.
“I’m Kevin Reza, I don’t carry as much weight in world sport as Lewis Hamilton in Formula One or Lebron James in the NBA.”
Reza believes he can make a difference despite the stark lack of representation from ethnic minorities in cycling; and while he doesn’t think the peloton itself has a racism problem, he is currently deciding on the best way to voice his own support for BLM, while urging the sport of cycling to move forward:
“I’m thinking about putting things in place, about being able to show my support for this movement. It’s not always easy and it’s tricky to go headlong and not think about exactly what you want to do”, explained Reza.
“I’m 32, I have 10 years of career behind me, so I feel really free and ready to fight and move forward.”
Kévin Réza raconte “Dolce Vita” de Booba via @franceinter https://t.co/1HxtRjnae0
— Kévin (@KevReza) September 10, 2020
Reza also recently appeared on the French radio station France Inter, discussing the Black Lives Matter movement and being the only black cyclist in the Tour de France peloton. In the interview he spoke about the rap song “Dolce Vita” by Booba, written in tribute to George Floyd, which he says give him feelings of “both rage and peace.”
12 thoughts on ““I’m ready to fight”: Kevin Reza, the only black cyclist at this year’s Tour de France, wants cycling to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement”
This is much more positive
This is much more positive than most BLM activities 😉
I would have sympathy for him
I would have sympathy for him, but ‘Black lives matter’ was co founded by a criminal who was done for child trafficking, which is modern slavery, which ( slavery ) is what these idiots profess to despise. Oh no hypocrite alert.
Judge dreadful wrote:
Ridiculous.
Would be simpler to just say openly that you don’t want equality for people regardless of the colour of their skin.
It’s like refusing to support the aims of Exctinction Rebellion simply because one of their leaders took a journey on a plane 10 years ago or that 19th century workers don’t deserve the support of a union because one of them had fraternised with a Luddite. BURN THEM ALL!
Is it OK to refuse to support
Is it OK to refuse to support XR because zero carbon by 2025 is a ludicrous aim?
Or is it more ludicrous to
Or is it more ludicrous to believe that we can carry on as we are without taking drastic action, with the polar ice caps melting & the West of America on fire?
HarrogateSpa wrote:
The polar icecaps will take around 1500 years to melt even if we started napalming all the worlds forest.
If you took XRs claims at face value the only reasonable course of action would be letting the cruise missiles fly into every fossil powerstation.
As a technolgoist I’m relatively confident that we will see an almot complete decarbonisation by 2050 without a vast amount of central planning and with quite a large amount of stranded assets in oil and gas.
With regards BLM and similar cycling would be very well served as a sport by expansion into other non traditional countries, fortunately as a sport of the rich it is only being assisted by the general trend for global incomes equalising.
massive4x4 wrote:
Unfortunately, only a small fraction of that melting needs to happen in order to cause devastating effects around the world.
You’re going to refuse
You’re going to refuse support to a group because they’re being too ambitious in an emergency?
Don’t get riled up by Judge
Don’t get riled up by Judge dreadful. Have sympathy for him. He’s 43, still lives with his mum and he’s never touched a lady’s boobs. I suspect he’s also hung like a button mushroom. Trolling is all he has.
Judge dreadful wrote:
Bull. Absolute bull.
Which of the three women who
Which of the three women who co-founded the movement are you accusing of child trafficking?
Judge dreadful wrote:
Totally agree with you, people should be very wary of the agenda of BLM, one of their aims is to abolish capitalism. So say goodbye to your expensive carbon bikes, they don’t want them. Corporate sponsorship of cycling, also out of the window. This is why so many F1 teams (and football teams) will not support BLM.
Really pleased to see “No to racism” on facemasks though, truth is that many sports in the UK are mainly white middle class participants. We need to encourage more diversity.