After a tumultuous season, international cycling team Israel\u2013Premier Tech, co-owned by Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams, is officially going to change its name and remove the word \u201cIsrael\u201d. The decision comes after repeated anti-Israel protests across Europe disrupted the team\u2014whose international roster of 31 cyclists includes just three Israelis\u2014during their open-road events, which can last hundreds of kilometres across the continent. Several cyclists crashed due to protester intervention. The decision to remove Israeli branding from Israel\u2013Premier Tech led co-owner Adams to announce he would step away from day-to-day involvement with the team.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot to be said about the political ramifications of wearing the Israeli name on your shirt in 2025, but our sports podcasters have a different theory about the shift. Israel\u2013Premier Tech enjoyed a successful season that brought them back to full status with the UCI World Tour, after being relegated down to the secondary UCI ProSeries since 2023. That means the stakes are higher, the stage is bigger, and the league\u2019s propensity for risk and disruption may well have shrunk. Is this purely a political decision, or are UCI executives trying to prevent more bad press in the coming year?<\/p>\n
Also on the docket: the boys talk about the Toronto Blue Jays\u2019 run to the American League championship series, big baseball moves, early NHL impressions and a quick NFL check-in.<\/p>\n
Transcript (excerpt)<\/p>\n
James Hirsh: We want to talk about a recent story. There\u2019s been some news with a cycling team, Israel Premier Tech, which is owned by Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams. And it\u2019s not going to be Israel Premier Tech anymore.<\/p>\n
Gabe Pulver: They\u2019ve been called Israel Premier Tech for, I guess it\u2019s been around five years. They\u2019ve been an official UCI squad, you know, for the last, I think, since 2020\u2014<\/p>\n
James Hirsh: Which means they compete in the big cycling races like the Tour de France and Giro d\u2019Italia, things like that.<\/p>\n
Gabe Pulver: Exactly. They were called Israel Start-Up Nation for a number of years and Israel Cycling Academy before that. They were a part of the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a that had to be shut down due to anti-Israel protests going on across Spain. And for a while, they took the name off the jersey and just called themselves Premier Tech for the week. That seemed to not assuage the protesters, and they\u2019ve decided to, as a quote, \u201cmove away from its current Israeli identity\u201d.<\/p>\n
James Hirsh: And part of that is Sylvan Adams, we should say, who has a pretty big job right now as president of the World Jewish Congress, has said that he can\u2019t continue to be part of the team that\u2019s not putting Israel in the name. It seems like they acquiesced to demands, I think, based on his statement.<\/p>\n
Gabe Pulver: So what\u2019s interesting is that Premier Tech is a Canadian company. They\u2019re, you know, a Quebecois tech company, and Premier Tech and its president own a chunk of it. A good chunk of the riders are Canadian and previously have been pretty supportive of the team\u2019s Israeli identity. Another interesting part of this is that Sylvan Adams is sort of, like you said, busy with his other job, but you wonder what the future of the team holds given that, you know, sort of the face of their team and, you know, a huge part of their Canadian connection is no longer going to be day-to-day running things, you know, with their identity. Sylvan Adams is a pretty proud guy, and as their identity changes and he steps back, you wonder if he\u2019ll continue to support the team financially as much as he has.<\/p>\n
James Hirsh: Yeah, I think it\u2019s very interesting to see this. This is sort of a test case for Israel\u2019s continued involvement in certain international sports or sports that have an international component. We\u2019ll see if that will change. Obviously, there\u2019s been great news today about the peace deal being signed. And if anyone is getting that news on that from a Jewish sports podcast, you\u2019ve got to tune in a little bit more.<\/p>\n
Gabe Pulver: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Check out, close this and go to CNN and see what\u2019s happening with that.<\/p>\n
James Hirsh: But look, there have been calls for Israel to be removed from FIFA. We\u2019ve talked about that. There have been calls for Israel to be excluded from other international sporting events. There have been on-the-ground protests that we\u2019ve covered, you know, including at lower-tier sporting events. We\u2019ll see what will come. This certainly seems like the first step of an Israeli team removing\u2014continuing to be owned by an Israeli, is affiliated with Israeli coaches, owned by Israeli teams, all Israeli people, all that. But no longer having Israel in the name is not just a symbolic gesture.<\/p>\n
Gabe Pulver: No. And I have a theory. It\u2019s not a very charitable theory, but Israel Premier Tech had sort of been relegated to semi-conditional status on the World Tour this year. They had riders at a bunch of events, but they weren\u2019t at every single event. They weren\u2019t full Tour members. Next year, they have regained their position back in full Tour members. And after the disaster where virtually every rider on Tour was furious about all of the protesters in the Vuelta, I think they\u2019re choosing to decide, I think they\u2019re choosing to say we\u2019re not going to have this shit anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like they\u2019re going to get rid of Israel, the name, when you\u2019re back on the Tour. Because we didn\u2019t like the news, we didn\u2019t like the coverage, we didn\u2019t like the protests. You know, you can stay involved, the Israeli money. Obviously, they\u2019ll take the Israeli money, they\u2019ll support the Israeli riders. However, they\u2019re very unlikely\u2014they just don\u2019t want the name Israel to be running around on the Tour so more people can show up and disrupt the Tour de France, which would be an enormous disaster for the sport. Maybe there are enough Jews in France and enough harmony in the international community in France that that won\u2019t be a problem. I doubt it. But I think it\u2019s probably a self-preservation move by the UCI before something a little bit bigger than the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a has to get cancelled.<\/p>\n
James Hirsh: Yeah, that makes total sense. And if there\u2019s one thing, I don\u2019t know much about the cycling federations and whoever runs that, but there\u2019s one thing I know about European technocrats who run sporting organizations is that they\u2019re all cowards and will always do the easiest thing in the goal of self-preservation.<\/p>\n
Gabe Pulver: Yeah, self-preservation.<\/p>\n
James Hirsh: They are about cycling, but I believe it, no matter what.<\/p>\n
Gabe Pulver: No, they are all there. The show must go on in any possible way.<\/p>\n
James Hirsh: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Gabe Pulver: You know, I think if a single rider was to ever say something political, they would literally, you know, deflate their tires, like to, you know, steal a metaphor.<\/p>\n
James Hirsh: Yeah. So when countries like Spain decide to, you know, continue their millennia-old tradition of anti-Semitism and protesters start protesting Israeli teams and non-Israeli riders at cycling events that they don\u2019t care about in the first place\u2014<\/p>\n
Gabe Pulver: Yeah.<\/p>\n
James Hirsh: \u2014You can bet that whoever\u2019s in charge of that cycling event is going to cave to those protesters. Absolutely.<\/p>\n
Show Notes<\/p>\n
Credits<\/p>\n
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