“Is sport a force for good? Or for battering people into submission?” Former UCI president Brian Cookson on Israel, sportswashing, banning nation state sponsors, and why protests highlight bike race security failures

Send us Fan MailFollowing Israel-Premier Tech’s decision to change both its name and nationality for 2026, in the wake of a season dominated by protests and controversy surrounding the team’s participation in races amid the conflict in Gaza, former UCI president Brian Cookson joins us on the podcast to discuss one of cycling’s biggest talking points in recent years: sportswashing.In a wide-ranging discussion, Cookson, who ran the UCI between 2013 and 2017 after 16 years at the helm of British Cycling, chats about the spectre of sportswashing in cycling, affecting both sponsorship and race locations, why nation states shouldn’t have their name on team jerseys, and how cycling’s stakeholders should deal with protests on the road.Elsewhere in the podcast, we also discuss the state of professional cycling in 2025, how the sport has moved on from the doping era Cookson saw first-hand as UCI president, and where things are currently going right (and wrong) for cycling in the UK.