Israel PT excluded from Giro dell’Emilia cycling race for ‘security reasons’: organisers

Israel-Premier Tech have been excluded from the Giro dell’Emilia cycling race on October 4 in Italy for safety reasons, the organisers told AFP on Saturday.

Adriano Amici, president of GS Emilia which organises the one-day race, said the team “will unfortunately not be present at our race. We had to make this decision for reasons of public security.”

“There’s too much danger for both the Israel Tech riders and others. The race’s final circuit is run five times so the possibility of the race being disrupted is very high.

“It’s a decision I regret having to make from a sporting perspective, but I had no other choice for public safety.” 

The Giro dell’Emilia, whose 2024 edition was won by cycling superstar Tadej Pogacar, will cover 199 kilometres from Mirandola to Bologna in northern Italy.

It is a ProSeries event, road cycling’s second tier after the World Tour, and is a dress rehearsal for Il Lombardia, the final Monument of the year which takes place the following weekend. 

The race concludes with a climb to the Madonna di San Luca sanctuary, not far from the historic centre of Bologna which has a large student population and a long history of left-wing politics.

This week Bologna’s local government, controlled by the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) called for Israel-Premier Tech’s exclusion, citing “the Israeli government as guilty of serious crimes against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.” 

Roberta Li Calzi, the city’s sports councillor, welcomed the decision to exclude the team.

“Given what is happening in Gaza it would have been hypocritical to consider the presence of a team linked to this (Israeli) government as insignificant,” she said in a statement. 

Four stages of this year’s Vuelta, including the finale in Madrid, had to be cut short due to mass protests against Israel’s continued offensive in Gaza and the participation in the event of the team, owned by Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams. 

The Premier Tech group which co-sponsors the team and is the manufacturer that supplies the riders with their bikes, wants the team to remove the world “Israel” from the name.

The war in Gaza broke out after Palestinian militants led by Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has since killed at least 65,926 people, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, figures the United Nations deems reliable.