From being bullied off the road in professional road racing to being called “monkeys,” Black cyclists are aware that the racist past remains in the present. Nothing I learned about the racial violence and the stymied career opportunities faced by cyclists over the generations has shocked me. Rahsaan Bahati rode for the Mercury Cycling Team in 2000, winning the U.S. I saw that the best approach for me would be to place myself among Black elite cyclists who had lived before me and those who were current. I wanted to test the truth I held in my thoughts about the sport. I wanted to get deeper meaning about my own experiences as a Black British cyclist and racer. This has extended into an international exploration and historical comparison of experiences. My interest in making meaning of the Black experience in cycling continues. One or two writers remain, but most have returned to their business-as-usual focus on the Grand Tours and the Classics. Post-2020, Black Lives Matter anti-racism action has waned, along with media interest in Black cyclists’ lives and experiences. Here they were, with their excavation equipment for digging up the stories of forgotten Black racing cyclists. Suddenly, the cycling media began to enter the field I was working in. I watched how this filtered into the world of cycling. During that year, I watched how worldwide protests instigated a frenzied media interest and inquiry into the experiences of Black people. I see my work as Black Lives Matter work that began before 2020, before the anti-racism protests known to the world as the Black Lives Matter movement gained global attention. Marlon Moncrieffe, Wig Worland/Courtesy Rapha Right: Spread from Desire Discrimination Determination – Black Champions In Cycling Courtesy Dr. My ultimate goal was to publish these stories in a book that raised the profiles of exceptional Black athletes and their lives in the sport. I collected photographs, memorabilia, and their oral testimonies for what became my 2018 exhibition at the University of Brighton, titled “Made in Britain: Uncovering the Life Histories of Black British Champions in Cycling.” I wanted the exhibition (which was shown again at the 2019 UCI Road Championships in Yorkshire) to engage the public in anti-racist discourse to challenge whiteness in cycling. Join Bicycling All Access for more great cycling storiesĪround 2016 I began looking into their lives. How did they get into the sport? Who were their mentors? What were the clubs they joined? What were their breakthrough races? How did they become cycling champions? What was their relationship with the national bodies? Why did I not see them racing at the World Championships, the Commonwealth Games, or the Olympics? It was only toward the end of my competitive racing days that I became aware of Black British road and track racers, people such as Maurice Burton, Russell Williams, David Clarke, Mark McKay, and Christian Lyte. Amateur Road Champion and a Red Bull–sponsored athlete. But it was the London 2012 Summer Olympics, and particularly the euphoric celebrations of Great Britain’s gold-medal-winning cycling success in what I describe as “the velodrome of whiteness,” that I began to ask myself: What about Black British cyclists? Why in my lifetime haven’t I ever seen a Black British road or track cyclist representing Great Britain on the track or on the road at the Olympic Games? I raced my bike for 20 years, from 1994 to 2014. The world of professional cycling is no exception. Black people in the Western world live under the spell of a persistent Eurocentric narrative and vision. Whether you agree with my Old Hollywood analogy or not, the facts of the two white-dominated worlds remain: The stories of generation after generation of Black Americans and Europeans are framed by the poisonous racism rooted in transatlantic slavery. He became the first African to race the Tour de France in 1913. Tunisia-born Ali Neffari, third from right, at Paris-Tours in 1917.
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