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chris_froome_with_giro_ditalia_tropjhy_picture_lapresse.jpg“Reinforcing the point that bike racing isn’t exactly green”: Giro d’Italia organisers criticised for rumoured Rome finale – and 700km transfer
In a year when climate change protesters twice disrupted the Tour de France, professional cycling’s questionable environmental record is under the microscope more than ever before. However, no one seems to have told RCS Sport, the organisers of the Giro d’Italia, who are reportedly determined to bring their flagship event back to Rome – and are prepared to subject the race’s caravan to a 700km transfer from the Julian Alps in the far north-east of the country to facilitate such a finale.
According to local reports, RCS Sport have apparently shelved plans to end the 2023 Giro in Trieste in favour of a final stage in Rome, which last hosted the grand tour in 2018. That particular edition wasn’t without its controversy, however, as rider concerns about the perceived danger of the course prompted a neutralisation of the general classification with seven laps of the city centre circuit remaining.
Nevertheless, it is the 700km transfer to Rome from the rumoured penultimate stage, a mountain time trial on the Monte Santo di Lussari, and the environmental impact of that seemingly unnecessary journey, that has most perturbed the cycling community.
For a mode of transport so intrinsically associated with green living, professional cycling’s environmental track record has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.
While grand tours may not have the carbon footprint of other major sporting events – Tour de France organisers ASO, who have launched a range of climate-conscious initiatives in recent years, claim that their race’s annual footprint is between a sixth or seventh of that of the Olympic Games – their impact on the planet cannot be underestimated. According to ASO’s estimates, their race emits the same amount of carbon as 68,500 French people in a year.
But it is the travel required for teams to compete across Europe and the world that arguably represents pro cycling’s most worrying and obvious environmental footprint.
For example, as pointed out by Richard Abraham in an article for Procycling magazine last year, Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl’s annual emissions (90 percent of which come from travel) total roughly 1,280 tonnes of C02 – the equivalent of 1,280 passengers taking return flights from Brussels to New York, and which require 3,000 football pitches of reforestation to offset.
Image: A.S.O., Aurelien Vialatte
Recent decisions made by grand tour organisers certainly haven’t helped matters. In the last decade or so, the Tour de France has largely eschewed the traditional transition stages which brought the peloton from the Alps or Pyrenees to Paris, in favour of one long, single plane transfer for the riders, while the race’s vast fuel-spewing caravan of team staff, organisation and media travel by car, bus and lorry to the French capital.
The modern infatuation with foreign grand departs has also added to the miles and emissions of the big three-week tours: in 2022, the Giro, Tour and Vuelta a España all started outside of their respective home countries, to the extent that all three races required early ‘travel days’ to facilitate the long journey back home following a money-spinning opening weekend.
It’s not surprising then that cycling commentators and fans have reacted negatively to the rumours that RCS Sport is planning to transport the Giro from the Julian Alps in the north-east corner of Italy to Rome for a ceremonial final stage, a decision one fan described on Twitter as “shameful”.
#Cycling is environmentally friendly
However as a pro sport it does very little to portray this sometimes
Not good enough @giroditalia & @UCI_cycling #ClimateAction is needed - not stunts like this https://t.co/IsoGjAlUha
— 💚Kingston & Surbiton Greens💚 (@RBKgreens) October 9, 2022
“Seriously the UCI need to call time on these absurd transfers,” cycling journalist and author Jeremy Whittle tweeted. “How can Grand Tours complain about environmental protestors while continuing to design totally inappropriate courses like this?”
The Kingston upon Thames branch of the Green Party also wrote: “Cycling is environmentally friendly. However, as a pro sport it does very little to portray this sometimes. Not good enough Giro d’Italia and the UCI. Climate Action is needed – not stunts like this.”
PedalbikePosts noted that the UCI’s own sustainability guidelines on transport advise that “taking climate action in this area means reducing the amount of travel and de-carbonising the mode of transportation wherever possible”, and questioned whether a 700km mid-race transfer represents “a commitment to this goal”.
“What was it again about ‘environmentally friendly’? Still not so much in Grand Tours apparently... sigh,” wrote Cycling Eve, while another Twitter user argued that the rumoured finale in Rome “reinforces the point that bike *racing* isn’t exactly green”.
The full route of the 2023 Giro d’Italia, which according to reports will commence with an individual time trial in the Abruzzo region, will be unveiled by RCS Sport on Monday 17 October.
Whether or not the Giro’s eventual route and accompanying transfers substantiate the environmental concerns shared on Twitter today, the message sent by the cycling community towards the sport’s stakeholders is becoming increasingly clear.
Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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Cycling infrastructure does not force drivers to break the law, drivers are the reason they break the law, no one else.
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18 comments
Taking the holistic view point.
My club runs evening time trials every week throughout the summer. Many of the riders turn up on their bikes, race, then ride home. Lots of other clubs around the country do the same thing.
Even at the next level up you will often find three or four riders sharing a car to get to an event, which compared to what motorsports enthusiasts do is quite green.
All the training that club cyclists put in tends to be door to door bike.
Most cyclists also replace car journeys with bike rides for utility jobs.
It's only when you get to the pointy end that big money comes into it and the environment gets thrown under the bus.
Overall our rating is not that bad
The factory that produces your bikes probably emits more than the entire TDF. The international shipping that ships your bikes to Europe from Asia, will emit more emmissions than the entire TDF. This is chicken-change, give it a break you miserable ingrates. My god you kids don't half complain about everything. The younger 'disposable-generation' aren't exactly improving things; one concert and you kids totally trash everything. You're all such "Greta's", you just like to complain for the vanity - so desperate for someone to pat you on the back, makes me want to puke.
Pretty flawed logic there, "The international shipping that ships your bikes to Europe from Asia, will emit more emissions than the entire TDF" - well possibly, if mine is the only item being carried on a giant container ship, I think they usually carry more than one.
In any case, I'd rather be a Greta than a Donald. There's always someone else doing worse than me to the environment, does that absolve me of responsibility?
ETA just done a little maths: CO2 emissions for container shipping are 16g per tonne per kilometre
Shanghai to London is 22,000km x 16 = 352,000g or 352kg per tonne.
Tour de France carbon output = 300,000 tonnes approx, so equivalent to approx 850,000 tonnes of goods shipped from Shanghai to London
Taking the average bike as weighing around 12kg, that's 83 bikes to a tonne of cargo
Thus 850,000 x 83 = 70,550,000 i.e. the carbon emissions of the Tour are the equivalent of shipping over seventy million bikes from Shanghai to London. So "The international shipping that ships your bikes to Europe from Asia, will emit more emissions than the entire TDF" doesn't really work.
Given this is 'environment' tagged, get the big picture here.
"While grand tours may not have the carbon footprint of other major sporting events – Tour de France organisers ASO, who have launched a range of climate-conscious initiatives in recent years, claim that their race’s annual footprint is between a sixth or seventh of that of the Olympic Games"
Which is basically huge? About 300,000 tonnes of CO2 based on the Tokyo Olympics having a 2 million tonne cost without spectators from overseas.
There are over 10,000 athletes involved in the Olympics, ie a lot more than 6 or 7 times the TdF. So the TdF is more polluting as a proportion of event size.
Adding a 700km flight for 360 people on the Giro is approx extra 50-75 tones of C02. Which really puts that estimate total for the TdF in perspective.
Plus don't forget that the TdF is annual, Olympics every 4 years so if you measure it over a 4 year period the TdF has two thirds of the CO2 footprint of the Olympics
It would be a good idea for the race organisers to produce a summary of CO2 emissions and sources - to give a clear picture of the race's climate impact. Then work on reducing them.
I guess the helicopters produce large amounts of greenhouse gases. Could they cut the number used?
I'm not sure why they haven't switched to drones for aerial footage. They could have several flying for far less cost than a helicopter.
How do the drones transmit the pictures to get into the network to your TV ?
Biggest environment impact of any bike race? arguably its the fans who attend it roadside
Presumably the same way the helicopters do now, beaming to a remote pickup unit which then transmits the pictures to the outside broadcast producers. I believe the main problem with using drones is the short flying time, particularly for heavier ones carrying good quality cameras, you'd need a relay of groundcrews continually bringing in drones for recharging and sending fresh ones out.
Is that really the case? I know there are plenty of enthusiasts – including me – who will travel to see a big race, but surely the vast majority of roadside spectators are residents of the towns and villages the races pass through, or those close by? Additionally, a significant proportion of travelling fans will have ridden there as part of a holiday. I'd be surprised if the whole Tour had a travelling supporter carbon footprint equal to a single round of Champion's League fixtures.
They estimate 10-12million spectators line the route of the TdF. If only half of them use sustainable travel, or lived along the route, that's still a huge carbon footprint left by the other half.
That is very true, but I very much doubt that 50% of spectators are people who have travelled an appreciable distance to see it, I don't know the figures but from roadside experience I would guess that around 90% are people who live nearby or who were holidaying in the area anyway. But that is pure guesswork!
Via the same transmitter-relay aircraft that the TV signal from all the motos goes via.
Yep my point was just to make people pause to think how does this tech actually work.
Because it's more complex than just a having a flying camera beaming pictures into your living room.
arguably, on the mountain stages that may well be the case, but on an average non finish, non moutain stage I bet most roadside fans are fairly local.
Meanwhile - police motorbikes, camera motorbikes, team cars, commisars cars, team busses, helicopters..don't forget the caravan of tat preceeding the race. I bet there are more motorised vehicles following the route, than there are bikes in the race.
Beautifully illustrated here:
Not just helicopters. There is another aircraft circling up above them to act as a relay, acquiring the TV signals from the helicopters and the motos and relaying them to a ground station.
Have a look at flightradar24.com anytime there's a big televised race on, you can see where the race is by the slowly drifting circles of the relay aircraft.
I always remember Keira McVitty's BTS of Le Tour videos as a VIP guest a few years back https://youtu.be/tl1NKCpJFjo
arguing over the TV helicopter seems a bit pointless when there are fleets of helicopters shuttling people around the stages.