"Just deserts: racing in the Middle East", 24 Feb 2021

...[T]he Tour of Qatar established itself as a high-quality, if visually uninspiring training race at the perfect time of year for the classics riders. The event ran until 2016, but its legacy was clear – the Worlds were held in the country in 2016, and it spawned and inspired a series of races which still hold a solid grip on the month of February. The Tour of Oman,...the Tours of Abu Dhabi and Dubai flourished briefly before amalgamating into the WorldTour-level UAE Tour which runs for the second year in 2020...And cycling doesn’t ask enough questions about what else these races achieve. You don’t have to dig very far to find very valid criticisms of Saudi Arabia, or Qatar, or the UAE, or Oman...consider the environmental impact of things like air-conditioned stadia, or Dubai’s indoor skiing area. And consider who actually built many of these structures. Qatar has been promising for years to do something about the ‘kafala’ system under which labourers are employed, but even in 2019, Amnesty reported that migrant labourers were being exploited and remained unpaid. The German WDR broadcaster reported that according to the Nepalese government, 1,426 Nepalese workers alone died in Qatar between 2009 and 2019. Women’s rights are extremely limited in Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia..Cycling is by its nature intimately tied to the geography of the region in which it takes place. The geographical is political, so cycling cannot take place in a politics-free bubble. The question is: does an entertaining early-season block of racing, and the torrents of money flowing into the sport when other sources have run dry, mean we can turn away when faced with these issues?