Two-time Critérium du Dauphiné winner Jakob Fuglsang has admitted that he feels a sense of relief at no longer wearing the Israel-Premier Tech jersey, as the 40-year-old Dane reflected on his retirement from pro cycling by saying it is “definitely nicer to ride without an Israel logo than with it.”
Speaking to Danish outlet Feltet after the Frederiksberg Criterium, his final professional race on Sunday, Fuglsang said: “Of course, it’s nicer to be without. I don’t want to get myself involved in what’s happening politically, but it’s definitely nicer to ride around without an Israel logo than with an Israel logo.”
The former Astana leader, whose decorated palmarès includes the 2019 Liège-Bastogne-Liège and 2020 Il Lombardia, added that protests targeting Israel-Premier Tech at major races had not directly affected him.
“I actually didn’t experience that. With or without Israel-Premier Tech at the start, there probably still would have been demonstrations. You also see climate protests during the Tour de France. These are big events with a lot of media attention. That said, it’s better to ride without [the logo].”
Fuglsang announced his retirement after riding the Giro d’Italia in June after a string of successful years in the peloton, which besides the two monuments and the two Dauphiné titles, have also included a stage win at Vuelta a España, GC wins at Tour of Denmark and Vuelta a Andalucía, and a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
He was recently praised by Danish legend and former Tour de France champion Bjarne Riis, who told Ekstra Bladet: “Jakob is without a doubt very high on the list of Denmark’s greatest riders. We’re saying goodbye to a truly outstanding rider. He’s been consistent over many years and delivered some major results.”
More praise came from Mads Pedersen before the final stage of Tour of Denmark, where Fuglsang officially bowed out of pro cycling earlier this month with a brave breakaway ride, as the Dane said: “I think we can all agree that Jakob is one of the greatest Danish riders we’ve ever had.”
Fuglsang’s comments follow those of former teammate Alessandro De Marchi, who just weeks ago said that he was “happy and relieved” not to represent Israel-Premier Tech and argued that it was “better to follow your morals.”
“We need to see real action from our governing body to position the cycling world on the right side and to show awareness of what’s going on in Gaza,” De Marchi, who’s also retiring at the end of this season, told The Observer. “We have to show that as a cycling world we care about human rights and international law violations.”
De Marchi’s interview came in the aftermath of a protest at the Tour de France, when an Extinction Rebellion activist stormed the finish straight of stage eleven in Toulouse wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogans “Israel out of the Tour,” “Stop Genocide,” and “Free Gaza.”
The demonstrator, waving Palestinian flags and wearing a keffiyeh, was tackled into the barriers by organisers just as Jonas Abrahamsen and Mauro Schmid sprinted for the line. A woman in the crowd was also seriously injured in the incident.
XR Toulouse claimed the action was carried out “to denounce Tour de France’s complicity in the genocide” and accused the race of “helping restore the image of the Israeli colonial regime” by allowing IPT to participate. The group declared: “Neutrality does not exist. Not acting in a situation of oppression is like taking the side of the oppressor.”
Israel-Premier Tech responded at the time by saying it “respects everyone’s right to free speech” but “absolutely condemns any protests or actions of individuals that interfere with racing at the Tour de France or threaten the safety of the peloton.”
While the Tour de France protest marked the most high-profile incident of its kind, it was by no means the first. At the Giro d’Italia in Naples, pro-Palestine activists ran into the road in front of a charging peloton.
At the 2024 Tour of Britain, campaigners confronted team staff at multiple stages, accusing the squad of “sportswashing” Israel’s reputation. Protests were also seen at the Tour Down Under in Australia.
The team itself quietly removed the word “Israel” from its vehicles and training kit in March 2024, replacing it with a monogram of the Star of David and “PT” logo, though it insisted it continued to “race proudly as Israel-Premier Tech.”
Criticism has also often focused on Sylvan Adams, the Canadian-Israeli billionaire who co-owns the team. Adams has long described IPT as “ambassadors” for Israel and has invested millions in sports events, including the 2018 Giro d’Italia Grande Partenza from Jerusalem.
Adams has also faced condemnation for remarks to Israeli media in which he said the Israel Defence Force “needs to finish the job” in Gaza and to “mop up,” comments widely criticised by campaigners as showing disregard for civilian suffering.
Critics of IPT have argued that its presence in cycling is starkly at odds with the destruction of Palestinian sport. Two weeks ago, the Guardian reported that Suleiman al-Obeid, the “Palestinian Pelé,” was killed by Israeli forces while waiting for humanitarian aid in southern Gaza. The Palestine Football Association said at least 662 sportspeople and relatives had been killed since the Israeli attacks began, including 421 footballers, and that 288 sports facilities had been destroyed.
Last month, Israel’s own B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel said the assault in Gaza amounted to genocide, citing the targeting of civilians “only because of their identity as Palestinians,” mass forced displacement, starvation and the destruction of essential infrastructure. Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières and UN-appointed experts have reached similar conclusions.
In April, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement accused cycling’s governing body, the UCI, of “helping to sportswash Israel’s Gaza genocide by allowing Israel Premier Tech to participate,” contrasting its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with what it called “Western hypocrisy.” It urged protesters to mobilise at the Giro, Tour and Vuelta against what it described as “Team Genocide.”
17 thoughts on “Former Israel-Premier Tech pro admits it’s “definitely nicer to ride without an Israel logo”, as Liége and Lombardia winner distances himself from team”
If somebody left a team – any
If somebody left a team – any team, let’s not make it yet another pro/anti- Israel discussion – on a point of principle for a lower salary elsewhere or maybe even not knowing whether they could get another contract, that would definitely be worthy of respect. Being happy to take a team’s shilling for a number of years without speaking out and then saying when you land an equivalent or better contract with another team or retire that you weren’t happy about racing for them seems both easy and a bit cheap to me. I don’t think that “I didn’t know anything about Israel/UAE/climate change back then” is a legitimate excuse either; as Clive James sagely pointed out when Albert Speer was flagellating himself before the world saying, “I should have known”, that was his crime, choosing not to know.
Surely one of thé big
Surely one of thé big problems in cycling IS there isn’t much money for teams or enough Big sponsors comparéd with football. Everyone has to do with what they can. It’s easy to criticise people but if you want to do thé job you Love it’s thé sort of compromise situations that arrive. Albert Speer IS perhaps a slightly over thé top comparaison.
darnac wrote:
Everybody has to decide on their own moral boundaries* and how far they are prepared to compromise them in the name of self interest. If the desire to be a professional bike rider (and make a very substantial amount of money from it) triumphs over the desire to act in an ethical fashion regarding murderous or oppressive regimes then so be it but at least admit it rather than hoovering up all the money, fame and plaudits and then afterwards saying I was never happy with it or excusing oneself by saying I wasn’t aware they were that bad.
Albert Speer gained considerable fame and fortune by colluding with and representing a regime that committed a genocide and then attempted to excuse himself by saying that he never knew they were that bad. The parallel seems fairly exact to me.
* I fully recognise of course that I myself am a hypocrite for watching and enjoying cycle racing that is in part funded by nations and organisations of which I disapprove.
Thé parallèl still seems
Thé parallèl still seems exaggerated. I hope I’d never bé in thé situation where I had to décidé how important my principles were. In thé end bike racing is not thé death camps. Though living in thé French Pyrénées my rides sometimes have a deathly feel …
darnac wrote:
Surely we all have to decide how important our principles are every day? At least if we want to give credence to the idea that we are moral and thinking beings.
I didn’t say anything remotely resembling bike racing being like the death camps. I pointed out that some people, and one person in particular, profited from their association with the genocidal regime and then claimed afterwards that they didn’t know about the genocide that was going on. In the current situation we have what is widely agreed, including by virtually every humanitarian organisation and the United Nations Special Rapporteur, to be a genocide going on and you have De Marchi saying he didn’t really know about Israel or the Palestinian issue when he joined the team. As I said, he should’ve known and ignorance is not a great excuse.
On a sidenote, any chance of turning off the acute accent function on your keyboard?!
Rendel Harris wrote:
I assumed it was a French-as-default-language-autocorrect issue – there’s a smattering of other accents as well as a lot of acutes.
“He speaks almost perfect
“He speaks almost perfect accent, with barely a hint of English”…
Why? It’s a French smartphone
Why? It’s a French smartphone and I’d rather be cycling. I’m not sûre I comparéd cycling with death camps and this whole discussion is becoming futilely serious. Let’s talk about handlebar widths instead.
darnac wrote:
“In the end bike racing is not the death camps”, so by implication you are talking as if I am comparing the two, which is patent nonsense.
When I write in French to my French friends, or indeed comment on French websites, I have the courtesy to take the trouble to write their language correctly but hey, you do you. If you didn’t want a serious discussion why did you comment in the first place? It’s rather a serious issue.
There are serious issues and
There are serious issues and serious issues. Being English and well-educated I think I write thé language correctly. But, hey, let’s talk about handlebar widths …
Isreal should be nowhere near
Isreal should be nowhere near international sport. Keep working with the BDS – justice for Palestine.
Rome73 wrote:
Yawn
(No subject)
How about picking up rubbish around your neighborhood or tutoring kids before justice for Palestine, whatever that means
Blackthorne wrote:
Well quite right too, I was going to sign a petition urging action to protect the Uyghurs the other day then I remembered that I haven’t done a litter pick for a fortnight so I regretfully had to tell the lady asking I didn’t have the right…
Some people do find it possible to care about more than one issue simultaneously.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Never mind interfering in other people’s sovereign waste management choices which are none of your business (and probably just reflect on your unconscious priveledge etc)…
How about not using
How about not using whataboutism to kill of all justified criticism?
Though it is perfectly possible to care about both things (gasp!), I have no problem saying that systematically killing children, aid workers and journalists bothers me more than a few Mars wrappers laying on the sidewalk – and I absolutely hate litter.
“He was recently praised by
Edited, it was OT.