New Black Cyclones, by Marlon Lee Moncrieffe

Title: New Black Cyclones – Racism, Representation and Revolutions of Power in CyclingAuthor: Marlon Lee MoncrieffePublisher: BloomsburyYear: 2024Pages: 212Order: BloomsburyWhat it is: Marlon Moncrieffe’s follow-up to Desire Discrimination Determination in which he again addresses the issue of racism in cycling and raises some challenging questions about the ways in which we might rid cycling of its colour barStrengths: Moncrieffe acknowledges that none of the solutions available to us are simpleWeaknesses: If all you think is needed to solve cycling’s racism problem is assimilating some Black riders into the sport, you probably won’t like some of the issues raised here by Moncrieffe

Cycling is a white sport. Think of a cyclist and chances are you’re thinking of a white cyclist.

A few years ago, asked to think of a cyclist, chances are you would have been thinking of a white, male cyclist. Today, there’s a good chance you’ll be thinking of a white, female cyclist.

What changed?

On one level, we did. Society changed and we changed with it. On another level, the sport changed. Women are more and more prominent in the sport. Conscious decisions were made to make that happen.

What will have to change in order for cycling to stop being seen as a white sport? What will have to change in order for more people to think of a Black cyclist – male or female – when asked to think of a cyclist?

Early in New Black Cyclones – Marlon Moncrieffe’s follow-up to his wildly successful Desire Discrimination Determination: Black Champions in Cycling this time with a more forward-looking perspective – the author discusses a social media poll he came across in 2022 which asked the question “Who is the greatest cyclist?”. After taking suggestions, the choices were narrowed down to four: Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Marianne Vos, and Other. As you might expect, Merckx won.

“Still, what this cycling poll and some of the public responses to it gave to me was the Eurocentric view on ‘greatness’ in cycling and cycle racing. The dysconscious racism in this was the tacit acceptance of dominant white cultural norms that have been passed on and learned as unsurpassable ways of knowing cycling; this culturally imbedded narcissism sees nothing else other than itself when describing the sport. The way of seeing and knowing ‘greatness’ in the sport of cycling has been colonised by an obsessive hegemonic Eurocentric focus on those racing cyclists who achieve their victories on the European stage in the Grand Tours, the Monuments and Classics. I am talking about the inculcation of the populace through perpetual reproduction of a Eurocentric narrative hyped by cycling commentators and the cycling media. These are the processes by which a Eurocentric view of cycling maintains its authority and dominant position.”

That poll, it could have offered Major Taylor as a choice. It could have offered Koichi Nakano as a choice. And let’s be fair here, Taylor’s successes on and off the bike, Nakano’s 10 World Championship victories, they earn both of those men a shot at the title. But because of the Eurocentric bias of the sport – personally I would argue the situation is worse than that and cycling is Tour-centric – they can’t be considered to be part of cycling’s pantheon.

There, then, is just one area in which the sport could change. Dear Peter Cossins, will you please, please, please stop writing the same Tour-centric books about the sport. Thanks in advance, Cycling. The very existence of New Black Cyclones could itself be an opportunity to embrace that change. Bloomsbury, the House that Harry Potter built, has been a strong supporter of cycling throughout the sport’s boom years in the UK, putting out books by the likes of Cossins, Brendan Gallagher, Alasdair Fotheringham and co. Not all Tour-centric, but all Eurocentric in their take on the sport. Now, they’re finally asking if there’s more to cycling than they’ve been showing you.

Or there is the smaller change: more Black cyclists in the peloton. This has been an ongoing project in the sport over the last 10 or 15 years. Pat McQuaid – who may have been making up for his own past, or may just cynically have been buying votes, or may even have been genuine in the initiatives he pursed here – made considerable efforts to bring more Black African cyclists into the peloton. Brian Cookson largely dropped the ball on that one during his brief time at the top of the sport. David Lappartient today, well he made sure that an African country would host the 2025 World Championships. That’s a small step in terms of representation, but an important one, nonetheless.

But cycling alone cannot fix this problem. Black African cyclists face a problem with visas, as the Ugandan rider Charles Kagimu explained to Moncrieffe:

“When I am preparing for a race and I am thinking about the visa situation, it affects my mental capacity. It increases my stress levels. Most countries in my part of Africa do not have embassies. If I can’t travel from Nairobi where I am based, I have gone elsewhere to travel. Having to apply for a visa doesn’t put you in [a] great situation, depending on the relationship between the country you are from and the country you are applying for. East African countries were colonised by Britain. You expect to have embassies that have decision-making, but the visa application must go to South Africa instead. The issues I have had with visas are to do with cycling. The process is hard for all African cyclists. I know white cyclists from Africa have had some problems but not as huge as the Black cyclists. It’s more about colour.”

One way around that is to focus on Black cyclists from Europe or America. More could be done to address the ethnicity gap in the sport, especially by British Cycling which, in a quarter of a century or so since John Major opened the Lottery’s purse strings, has been notably poor in identifying and developing Black talent. Or we could embrace more grassroots initiatives, such as Tao Geoghegan Hart’s decision to sponsor a Black under-23 rider at the Hagens Berman Axeon team. But while a lot of responses to that initiative were glowing, you do also have to consider the wider way in which it could have been seen:

“Many of these responses did not contemplate critically this intervention which to me epitomised the exclusive power of white sanction – the power of determining and enabling Black people to access white systems and structures. What I was seeing was like Roald Dahl’s privileged and wealthy ‘Willy Wonka’ character offering a ‘golden ticket’ to a poor ‘Black’ Charlie to enter the World Tour cycling factory for a brief moment only.”

Moncrieffe does praise Geoghegan Hart – “In taking the knee and raising his voice I think [he] was generous and brave to use his public profile and power as a Grand Tour winner to call for a transformation in the white-dominated sport” – but that fear that he was just another Willie Wonka dolling out golden tickets to Black Charlies, that shouldn’t be dismissed. Any solution that encourages the view that to be Black is to be a charity case is only adding to the problem it seeks to solve.

That shouldn’t be news: Bod Geldof has faced the same criticisms for many years now. But cycling, in its desire to do good, doesn’t consider the negatives. Take, for instance, the way some have turned Africa into a dumping ground for used kit:

“I met and spoke with one African cycling charity leader who had experienced this. She wanted to remain anonymous for this book but she showed me that she had been given around 25 pairs of cycling shoes, but they didn’t have the necessary cleats and pedals for immediate use. She had no way to obtain these items, as her charity was based in a rural part of the country, a four-hour drive from the capital city, with no specialist bike shop or the funding to obtain cleats and pedals for the shoes. The cycling shoes remained unused, gathering dust in the boxes that they came in from the UK.”

These criticisms of current or recent initiatives, they are not to suggest that New Black Cyclones is a book brimming with negativity, a book that just criticises the ways in which some people seek to address the issue of racism in cycling. It isn’t. For the most part Moncrieffe – as he did in Desire Discrimination Determination – celebrates the people he talked to during the course of writing and researching this book. In America, where he was promoting Desire Discrimination Determination, he met members of various Major Taylor cycling clubs and came to see Taylor as the Jesus Christ of the Black cycling community in the USA:

“in his human form as an outstandingly skilful and powerful Black cyclist that would attract huge public followings to watch him perform miracles on the bike before their eyes; in the afterlife, Taylor is the spiritual force conjured by the Black cycling community as their icon and their idol to follow – the Black Cyclone. Taylor as a force of self-empowerment, resilience and self-belief is the inspiration for millions of people who have come to know his story.”

Or there are the Black cyclists Moncrieffe met on visits to South Africa, Rwanda and Sierra Leone and the Afrocentric cycling utopias they are actively building today. After listening to them, one radical solution Moncrieffe offers is for Black cycling to emulate the West Indies cricket teams of the 1970s and 1980s:

“The Windies brought together as one phenomenal force the best cricketers from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, and Guyana. They created their own way of playing a sport that in white circles is the epitome of British colonialism, breaking the traditional mould and blowing all their opponents away. […] It could be useful for some of the national cycling bodies of the Caribbean islands and across the African continent to apply the Windies’ approach to future team formations in future Commonwealth Games, World Cycling Championships and Olympic Games. This would be a challenge to the status quo in cycling.”

Such utopian thinking, it isn’t always about producing the end envisaged and Moncrieffe acknowledges this, admits that individual national federations are hardly likely to embrace change like this. But it is thinking like this that is needed if we are to avoid double-edged solutions that treat Black cyclists as charity cases.

New Black Cyclones offers no easy answers. But it does raise some challenging questions as to how far cycling is willing to go in order to embrace a more diverse peloton. Is assimilating Black African talent into the European peloton as far as we are willing to go, or are we willing to embrace what Black African cycling might offer the sport?