Saudi Arabia invests more than one and a half billion dollars in international sporting events that are to take place in their own country. But the change promoted by sport has its limits.
The Saudi tour should last at least five years. Co-organizer is the Tour de France organizer ASO.
The setting is impressive. The logo of the Saudi tour is projected onto the huge rock, which has been sanded by desert storms to give it the appearance of a gigantic elephant. All around the colorful lights of the laser show and fireworks. The rock is bathed in green as a singer enters the stage and sings the Saudi national anthem. The crowd, mostly young men and women, who were traveling to the al-Ula region on special flights from the capital Riyadh, rise. And the foreign observer is amazed at how much national pathos a simple bike race can evoke.
The Saudi Ministry of Sports and the Royal Commission of al-Ula are co-organizers of this opening show and also the five-day cycle race with 16 racing teams, including 8 from the World Tour. The latter is an agency with around 800 employees, which is to build a tourism infrastructure in the desert sand within ten years with 32 billion dollars. The main attraction is the ancient necropolis of Hegra. The Nabataeans hammered monumental tombs into the rock here between 200 BC and 100 AD.
The peloton of 96 professional cyclists also drove through this area. The gravel track caused some falls and a lot of great pictures amidst all the dust. However, even this picturesque tightening of the course did not change the subsequent sprint victory of Australian Caleb Ewan.
The region of «Elephant rock» in Al-Ula, where the tour takes place.
The peloton on Stage 1 of the Saudi Tour.
The Crown Prince’s PR vehicle
The pictures were the most important thing for the organizers. “The Saudi Tour is our way of introducing al-Ula to international cycling fans. I want them to see what a great area it is. Hopefully they’ll do some tours here,” says Philip Jones. He works for the Royal Commission, headed by none other than Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Jones, a US tourism expert whose wiry build betrays his penchant for cycling, is the driving force behind the two-wheeler offensive. To his credit, he doesn’t just think about the fancy pictures. “We want to expand al-Ula into a cycling center for the whole of Saudi Arabia. We have opened our first bike shop, more will follow. We want many boys and girls to be enthusiastic about this sport and develop into sports personalities.»
True to this maxim, a children’s race was also organized alongside the professional race, boys and girls mixed, the latter with a helmet and no veil at all.
This can be interpreted as a sign of change. The race with all its accompanying events is part of Vision 2030, with which the Crown Prince wants to make the country more economically diverse and modern. “With Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia also aims to organize major international events. The Paris-Dakar Rally recently came to an end here. Formula 1 is coming next month, Formula E was just in Riyadh. All of these events will continue to take place in Saudi Arabia for the next ten years,” proudly announced Hussam al-Khalifa, a representative of the Saudi Ministry of Sports.
glitches and zeal
The Saudi tour should also last for at least five years. Co-organizer is the Tour de France organizer ASO. Despite money and competence, however, not everything went smoothly. The television broadcast of the first leg was canceled because the plane that was supposed to broadcast the live signal was not allowed to climb. At the award ceremony for the best young professional, the wrong driver was called to the ceremony first. But the effort to do well was clearly noticeable. Crowds of workers filled holes in the asphalt in good time before the stages.
Impressions from the second stage of the Saudi tour.
The list of international sporting events in Saudi Arabia is indeed remarkable. In football, Supercup matches of the Italian and Spanish leagues were held, as well as golf, tennis, chess and boxing events. Last year, a Saudi consortium bought Premier League club Newcastle United. The British organization Grant Liberty estimated investments in western professional sport at more than 1.5 billion dollars last year.
Saudi Arabia is following the path taken by regional rivals Qatar and followed by other neighbors. Qatar organized a cycling tour for professionals from 2002 to 2016 and hosted the 2016 World Cycling Championships, followed by the soccer World Cup in November. Oman has been organizing a professional cycling race since 2010 – also in partnership with the ASO. The United Arab Emirates followed suit in 2014, with the help of Giro d’Italia organizer RCS. Bahrain and the Emirates have each had a racing team on the World Tour since 2017.
Presentation of the Saudi tour 2022 in January.
The tour leads directly through the desert.
Saudi Arabia wants to follow suit. The Royal Commission is already a co-sponsor of the Australian racing team Bike Exchange. “We are in the second year of a three-year commitment. I can imagine that in the future al-Ula will not only be a shoulder sponsor, but also the name sponsor of a racing team that is the only one in the region to have a men’s and a women’s team,” says marketing expert Jones, outlining the next steps.
Saudi Arabia wants the 2034 World Cup
In the meantime, the Ministry of Sports is working on the really big coup. “I cannot confirm that Saudi Arabia will be running to host the 2030 World Cup. We are aiming for the 2034 World Cup, »says the ministry representative al-Khalifa.
In these major sports-political plans, the pros on the World Tour are only supporting actors. They dutifully fulfill their task and deliver exciting races. They are cautious in their non-sporting statements. They mostly praise the beautiful landscape and point out that, contrary to expectations, the women in the hotels are not wearing burqas, and some are not even wearing veils or headscarves. The fact that they are involved in an image campaign intended to make a country attractive, whose leadership imprisons political opponents, imposes them with death sentences and – in the case of the regime critic Jamal Khashoggi – flies a death squad to foreign countries – is at least ignored in official discussions.
Some athletes flip through the catalog of draconian punishments in the kingdom on their mobile phones, then sarcastically note as progress that the death penalty for minors was abolished two years ago.
Rolf Aldag, sports director at the German racing team Bora-Hansgrohe, lets you look deeper into the heart. “You can’t completely push it away,” he says. However, Aldag believes it is more the job of the media than the athlete to name the problems. “I think it’s less the job of a cyclist who has a number on his back and rides from A to B with a heart rate of 185 than it is for a journalist to look behind the facade.”
Aldag is also calling on the heads of international sports organizations to take action. “The big sports organizations always send the signals. It’s clear that if they don’t say anything, nothing will change. Then everyone just follows along. The initial spark has to come from above.”
The world association UCI did not answer a question from the NZZ as to whether there were special agreements to enforce human rights with countries that host UCI races. A planned meeting with OSA representatives on this topic has not yet taken place in Saudi Arabia for logistical reasons.
screams of terror
And the change in the country that is supposed to be promoted through sport also has its limits. Hardly a student or teacher left the female-only branch of Taibah University, at the gates of which the second leg of the Saudi tour began. When a journalist opened the front gate of a building, he was met with sharp screams of horror. A woman, hastily covering her face, ushered him off the premises as if he were the shaitan himself.
The contrast to the Jeunesse dorée from Riyadh, who attended the opening ceremony completely unveiled, men and women mixed, could hardly have been greater.
