ROME –The Israel-Premier Tech team has been excluded from the Giro dell’Emilia cycling race on October 4 in Italy for safety reasons, the organizers told AFP on Saturday.
The decision comes after a recent race in Spain was repeatedly disrupted by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel demonstrators, protesting Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.
Adriano Amici, president of GS Emilia, which organizes 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 kilometers 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 center 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 center-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 councilor, welcomed the decision to bar 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, indicating that she wanted the team excluded for political reasons, not safety.
Four stages of this year’s Vuelta a Espana, 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, which is not Israel’s official national team and is 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, has said it wants the team to remove the word “Israel” from the name.
The war in Gaza broke out after terrorists led by Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages.
Recent weeks have seen a surge in calls to boycott Israel in sporting and cultural events amid the stepped up Israeli military operations in Gaza and the suffering of the civilian population in the Strip.
Israel denies accusations of genocide and says it takes measures to minimize harm to civilians, but blames Hamas for using Gazans as human shields and deeply embedding itself in civilian infrastructure.