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news
kevin reza - via facebook.PNG"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
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."
Jack has been writing about cycling and multisport for over a decade, arriving at road.cc via 220 Triathlon Magazine in 2017. He worked across all areas of the website including tech, news and video, and also contributed to eBikeTips before being named Editor of road.cc in 2021 (much to his surprise). Jack has been hooked on cycling since his student days, and currently has a Trek 1.2 for winter riding, a beloved Bickerton folding bike for getting around town and an extra beloved custom Ridley Helium SLX for fantasising about going fast in his stable. Jack has never won a bike race, but does have a master's degree in print journalism and two Guinness World Records for pogo sticking (it's a long story).
Latest Comments
- David9694 3 hours 20 min ago
I hope you're all checking your insurance policies, helmets, test certificates and road tax, it's the 2024 round-up...
- check12 5 hours 1 min ago
200 people out of a close by population of how many? Just build it and stop being a wuss
- Spangly Shiny 6 hours 34 min ago
To paraphrase Field of Dreams, "Build it right and they will come: and use it!"
- Rendel Harris 8 hours 55 min ago
And a Happy Christmas to you, road.cc staff!
- Rendel Harris 9 hours 43 min ago
The odds of not being able to find a single pedestrian - just one, note, "any pedestrian" - in an area containing more than about ten of them who...
- bikeman01 11 hours 22 min ago
I love how wannabe racer reviewers talk about fork flex under braking like their tyres are made of glue. I find traction gives long before fork flex.
- hawkinspeter 12 hours 29 min ago
They don't make them like they used to
- LongitudeLatitude 13 hours 19 min ago
Thanks for using my picture of chocolate in your opening picture. The original can be found here, chocolate! | LongitudeLatitude | Flickr.
- lesterama 13 hours 46 min ago
Fair comments. I'll put my hands up and say I got the wrong end of the stick with this one. ¡Feliz navidad! Here's a pic for the season of goodwill.
- Mike Holmes 13 hours 51 min ago
A trip down memory lane (or street) for me - Harry Quinn's bike shop was at the top of our Street and I used to spend time staring at the bikes and...
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12 comments
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.
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 XR because zero carbon by 2025 is a ludicrous aim?
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?
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.
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 support to a group because they're being too ambitious in an emergency?
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.
Bull. Absolute bull.
Which of the three women who co-founded the movement are you accusing of child trafficking?
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.
This is much more positive than most BLM activities