{"id":11513,"date":"2025-07-20T22:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T22:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/11513\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T22:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T22:44:07","slug":"cyclings-showcase-remains-heavily-sponsored-by-fossil-fuels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/11513\/","title":{"rendered":"Cycling’s showcase remains heavily sponsored by fossil fuels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cyclist Cyclist Matt\u00e9o Vercher from the French TotalEnergies team during stage 8 of the Tour de France, between Saint-M\u00e9en-le-Grand and Laval, on July 12, 2025. SARAH MEYSSONNIER\/REUTERS <\/p>\n

On the winding roads of the Tour de France, the bicycle embodies the ideal of low-impact mobility. But behind the celebration<\/a> and athletic endeavor, another mechanism is at work: the symbolic reconquering of environmental issues by champions of the fossil fuel industry.<\/p>\n

At the end of June, the French oil giant TotalEnergies announced it had signed an official three-year partnership with the Tour de France, starting in 2026. The company is also the main sponsor of one of the participating teams, which bears its name.<\/p>\n

Within the Tour’s peloton, six other teams (out of 23) are directly or indirectly connected to the fossil fuel industry: UAE Team Emirates-XRG, backed by the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s leading oil producers; Ineos Grenadiers, named after the British petrochemical giant Ineos and an off-road vehicle, the Grenadier, made by its automotive division; Bahrain Victorious, backed by Bahrain, a country whose economy is heavily dependent on oil production; Jayco-AlUla, whose name refers to the Saudi city of Al-Ula that is at the heart of a major tourism initiative by one of the world’s top oil producers; XDS-Astana, funded by a sovereign wealth fund supporting Kazakhstan’s oil and gas company; and Uno-X Mobility, a chain of gas stations present in Norway and Denmark.<\/p>\n

You have 80.45% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cyclist Matt\u00e9o Vercher from the French TotalEnergies team during stage 8 of the Tour de France, between Saint-M\u00e9en-le-Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-11513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}