After organizers cut short Stage 11 of the Vuelta a España to avoid mass protests at the finish line in Bilbao, they were faced with a choice: protect their race or protect Israel–Premier Tech. Protestors made clear both their disgust over the Israeli team’s participation in the Spanish Grand Tour and their continued commitment to haranguing the team if Vuelta organizers did not remove them from the race. Despite the protests and calls from within the peloton for IPT’s removal, organizers stuck by Sylvan Adams’s squad, hoping things would die down once the race left the Basque region.
Things did not die down. Wednesday’s Stage 16 was also cut short as hundreds of anti-genocide protestors massed three kilometers from the finish line in Mos-Castro de Herville. Photographer Zac Williams was on the scene, and he told Defector he estimated that roughly 1,000 to 1,500 people were protesting. This time, organizers simply moved the finish line up eight kilometers rather than neutralize the entire stage. Egan Bernal won the shortened stage, a spectacular result for the former champion making a comeback from harrowing injuries, though just as Ineos tainted Thymen Arensman’s Tour de France win by refusing to answer questions about the team’s knowledge of a doping story, Vuelta organizers tainted Bernal’s feel-good win by continuing to allow the team advertising a genocidal state to keep racing.
IPT released a statement last week saying “the team remains committed to racing on at the Vuelta a España. Any other course of action sets a dangerous precedent in the sport of cycling not only for Israel–Premier Tech, but for all teams.” The team’s owner Sylvan Adams has been quite pugnacious in his denials that the team would ever change its name or leave the race, and he said protestors threw paint on the team car he spent Stage 11 in. When asked about the longstanding rumors that the team would change its name, he said, “Fake news. We will never ride without the name Israel.”
The next day, IPT did just that, removing the word “Israel” from team jerseys. The team announced the change last Friday, the same day the regional government of Asturias boycotted the race over IPT’s involvement. That might not seem like a very big deal, but it is quite embarrassing for a race like the Vuelta to be shunned like that. Grand Tours are replete with various regional, local, and national functionaries showing face and blessing the race. Something like the mayor of Toulouse taking the stage at the Tour de France to boast of his city’s transit improvements or whatever is a crucial part of what elevates these bike races into the national-level spectacles that make them such institutions.
Speaking of the Tour, Escape Collective reported last week that one of the many organizations fed up with IPT is the Amaury Sport Organisation, which runs the Tour. The ASO had to pay for extra security at the IPT bus throughout the 2025 Tour, and asked the team to change its name to avoid having to deal with the headache of letting it promote a country that on Tuesday bombed several buildings in Qatar in an attempt to kill the very people with whom Israel is presently pretending to negotiate a peace deal.
Per Escape Collective, several Vuelta riders have asked organizers to get IPT out of the race, voicing their objections both to the way the team’s presence has ruined the race and also to the horrors being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. The race’s technical director, Kiko Garcia, also told a Spanish outlet, “We all have to find a solution, and for me there is only one right now: for the Israeli team to realize that being here doesn’t make it any safer for everyone else. But we can’t make that decision. They have to make it.”
A bike race is an easy thing to disrupt. A stage at the Vuelta will cover some 170 kilometers, through mountains, villages, and long stretches of otherwise unpopulated countryside. Riot cops can attempt to harass and beat up people when they swarm near finish lines or in larger towns along the race course, but nobody can guarantee four hours of disruption-free racing: There is simply more road than can be secured. The protestors have enormous leverage then, with the ability to disrupt or even stop the race with relative ease. Racing a bike is stressful and difficult under any circumstances, but riders do not want to have to worry about whether they’re going to get crashed out of the race because a rich guy wants to insist on his right to advertise the state of Israel.
Most of the agitating that riders have done has taken place in private WhatsApp chats, one of which was the subject of a reported spat between IPT’s South African director Daryl Impey and Visma’s second-in-command Matteo Jorgenson. “There have also been some riders supporting, some riders feeling bad,” Impey told reporters after Stage 12. “But Jorgenson has been the most vocal in that group, he’s probably the guy who’s had the most to say. So, maybe you should ask Jorgenson what he thinks. He’s been pretty vocal, messaging the guys to leave. I don’t know who made him king of the Vuelta, but maybe you should go ask him what he thinks.”
Jorgenson, one of the most thoughtful people in the peloton, said, “I don’t have a comment to make on it, and I’ve already voiced my opinion in a situation where I’m able to and I can make an impact. I think sometimes cyclists are really in our own world and focused on our tasks, so we’re all sometimes annoyed when situations arise. And I’m just trying to encourage everyone to come out of that and realize the bigger situations and take some perspective.”
Jorgenson’s teammate Jonas Vingegaard is both the race’s current leader and its most famous participant. After Stage 15, he spoke about the protests. “In relation to all the talk about the protests and everything that has happened, I actually think that people are doing it for a reason. It’s horrible what’s currently happening, and I just think that those who are [protesting] want a voice,” he told Danish TV. “I think those protesting do so here because they need a forum to be heard. They want the media to allow them that possibility to be heard, so they do it here. Of course, in a way, it’s a shame it happens exactly here, I think a lot of us think so, but again, I think they’re just desperate to be heard.”
There are five stages left in the Vuelta, and there is no sign that people are going to stop protesting. Over the weekend, organizers were rumored to be considering whether they should simply cancel Stage 21 into Madrid, and though they shot those rumors down, they can expect to meet continued resistance as long as IPT is in the race.
