In November 2021, a ‘New Black Cyclone’ appeared to storm across the world’s cycling scene.
The incredible Biniam Girmay of Eritrea produced a mighty, explosive sprint to finish ahead of the chasing peloton in the Under-23 UCI World Championships road race in the Flanders region of Belgium. In claiming a silver medal, he became known as ‘the first Black’ cyclist to stand on the podium in the event.
I saw how the cycling media were instantly enthralled by the emergence of this young and gifted cycling athlete from Africa. It seemed that it would only be a short matter of time before Girmay would storm again.
He did, with a sprint finish victory, again in Flanders, at the Gent-Wevelgem classic race, on 27 March 2022. From this, the cycling media began an influential discourse, stating that ‘history’ was being made right before our eyes, through a ground-breaking moment in the sport.
Girmay continued with momentum and force. He followed his Gent-Wevelgem victory with what was described as a ‘historic’ ‘first Black African’ victory on stage 10 of the 2022 Giro d’Italia. At the Tour de France in 2024, Girmay produced a sensational sprint victory on stage 3 of the race. ‘The first Black’, ‘the first Black African’ and ‘First Black Man in History to Win a Tour de France Stage’ were some of the cycling media headline terms used to announce his feat. Girmay stormed again. He won stages 8 and 13 for a hat-trick of victories.
He wore the green jersey throughout most of the race to denote his leadership of the sprinters’ competition. He sealed overall triumph at the tour’s conclusion in Nice, where he was crowned as the best sprinter in the world’s most renowned cycling race. What a champion!
New Black Cyclones
The cycling media boom in attention towards Girmay, and the racial emphasis on him being ‘the first Black’ rider to achieve success, was, in my view, framed in a similar way to the emergence and breakthrough successes of the original cycling media-named ‘Black Cyclone’ – the track sprint sensation, Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor (1878–1932) of the USA. Early on in his professional racing career, as a Black cycling athlete, he stormed onto a white-dominated cycling scene.
I also saw similarities in the ‘first Black’ language of Girmay’s representation, in what I had shared in my 2021 book, Desire, Discrimination, Determination – Black Champions in Cycling – a historical and contemporary narrative biographical account on the experiences of aspirant, elite and professional Black cycling athletes, who over the years had competed in white-dominated spaces.
In my accounts, I illuminated the peculiar and complex oxymoronic existence of the solitary Black cycling athlete. These individuals have sometimes been revered as the ‘extraordinary’ being, while at other times they have been looked upon, by the same dominant white gaze, as the freak ‘novelty’, existing as the ‘other’ or as a possible threat to the status quo of these exclusively white cycling spaces.
My new book, New Black Cyclones, takes my explorations of racism, and the representation of Black people in the sport of cycling, much further than before.
I present on and critique historical and contemporary examples of white sanction in cycling – an exclusive endorsement given to Black people from the white people who hold the power of enablement for allowing access and possible advancement in the sport. I share my reflections on Black people’s views and experiences in the sport by giving a portrayal of cycling since the Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests across the world in 2020. I focus on incidents of racism, and I explore where anti-racism protest and activism has aimed to challenge this, for changing the way in which the sport can be better represented.
I present accounts of my journeys across the USA, where I visited Black cyclists of grassroots communities in New York City; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Charlotte, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia. I share my learning from engaging with their cycling cultures, in witnessing the self-empowerment of Black people together as ‘New Black Cyclones’, transforming how the sport is seen.
Kigali 2025
In 2025 the UCI World Championship road racing events are set to take place in Rwanda, central-eastern Africa. This has provided me with thought to the immediate, and long-term possibilities on the way in which the sport could be viewed as genuinely advancing to become more globally inclusive and equitable in its representation.
Still, given this ‘interest-convergence’ of Europe moving towards embracing Africa and African people, I ask questions: Is this shift of interest towards Africa simply a new phase of European colonialism, repeating itself as cycling’s ‘scramble for Africa’, for seizing control of Africa’s untapped potential in cycling?
What do Black cyclists from Africa predict will happen for the representation of cycling during the 2025 UCI World Championship road races, and after this event?
A sport given by the European imagination
I wanted to understand the extent to which the powerful and authoritative communication and representation of cycling as a sport given by the European imagination has an influence on Black people in cycling to believe, think and do by this frame of reference.
I aimed to see how Black people in self-empowerment and self-determination were developing their own cycling utopias across their Western nations and across the African continent.
Through my journeys across the cycling cultures of Black people, from Africa, and those Black people of the African diaspora, in the USA and in the UK, I aimed to make sense of any common patterns of shared experiences, through their responses to the questions of my curiosity. By my sharing of their testimonies in New Black Cyclones, I want to champion their thoughts, and their voices, shifting these from the often unheard, and unrecognised margins of the sport, to a more central positioning of value.
This article is extracted from the new book New Black Cyclones: Racism, Representation and Revolutions of Power in Cycling by Marlon Lee Moncrieffe (Bloomsbury Sport). Available to buy now
