As cycling’s most prestigious annual event, the Tour de France, prepares to kick off this weekend, two of its competing squads — both with deep state ties to Gulf nations the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — are facing growing scrutiny over human rights concerns that have reignited debates over sportswashing in global cycling. Leading the odds to claim overall victory at this year’s race is Tadej Pogacar, a Slovenian cyclist widely regarded as the most dominant male road rider in the modern sport. Pogacar has already secured four Tour de France titles across the last six editions, all claimed while riding under the banner of UAE Team Emirates XRG, formerly known as simply UAE Team Emirates. The squad has held the top spot in the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) global team rankings since 2023, cementing its status as the most formidable outfit in professional road cycling. Beyond Tour de France success, Pogacar has notched up an extraordinary array of wins for the team, including the Giro d’Italia crown, two UCI Road World Championship titles, and a long list of victories in prestigious one-day classic races. This year, however, a coalition of leading international human rights organizations has broken its silence ahead of the race, penning an open letter to the UCI calling for the immediate suspension of both UAE Team Emirates XRG and a second Gulf-backed outfit, Team Bahrain Victorious. The letter, co-signed by Fair Square, Sudan Unlimited, the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird), and Christian Solidarity Worldwide, was reviewed exclusively by Middle East Eye ahead of the Tour’s opening stage. Middle East Eye has reached out to the UCI, UAE Team Emirates XRG, and Team Bahrain Victorious for official comment on the allegations, but had not received responses as of publication. Rights groups argue that UAE Team Emirates XRG operates under the direct financial and political control of the Emirati state, a claim backed by the team’s own public messaging. On the squad’s official LinkedIn page, leaders state that the team’s core mission is to “represent an entire nation, the UAE.” The team’s branding mission was on full public display after Pogacar’s 2024 Tour de France victory, when the entire squad chanted “U-A-E! U-A-E!” in unison from the podium in Paris. The team’s two primary sponsors are both state-controlled entities: Emirates airline is owned directly by the government of Dubai, while XRG, the investment arm of the UAE’s national oil company, falls under the control of the Abu Dhabi government. The letter also draws attention to the team’s founding: when it was first launched in 2017, one of its founding sponsors was the International Golden Group, a United Arab Emirates-based military contracting firm. A United Nations expert panel identified the company back in 2013 as a violator of the UN arms embargo on Libya, after it was found to have supplied weapons to unauthorized armed groups in the country. While International Golden Group is no longer listed as an active sponsor, its logo appeared on the team’s racing jerseys as recently as 2021, years after the UN report documenting its embargo violations was released. At the core of the demand to suspend the UAE squad is the human rights coalition’s claim that there is “irrefutable evidence” linking the UAE, which owns and controls the team, to the ongoing atrocities in Sudan. The letter identifies the UAE as the primary financial and military backer of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group that has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces in a brutal civil war since April 2023. Middle East Eye has previously reported on the UAE’s extensive supply network, which funnels weapons to the RSF through a web of intermediaries across Libya, Chad, Uganda, and Somalia. Since the conflict began, RSF fighters have been accused of perpetrating widespread massacres, systematic sexual violence, and ethnic cleansing that multiple international bodies have designated as genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region. “We know that the UAE uses sports teams to project a positive, sanitised image of itself while at the same time offering material and political support to the RSF in Sudan, who stand accused of genocide, and who may commit further atrocities in El-Obeid,” Alex Carlen, policy director at Fair Square, told Middle East Eye. The groups argue that allowing the state-owned team to compete in top-tier UCI events gives the UAE a valuable public platform to whitewash its human rights record. “Cycling’s most prominent and celebrated races have become a very public platform that the UAE state is using to project a positive image of the UAE, which stands in marked contrast to the violence and repression that underpins its power,” the letter reads. The coalition is also calling for the suspension of Team Bahrain Victorious, the second Gulf-backed squad set to compete in this year’s Tour de France. The team was founded by Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, a senior member of Bahrain’s ruling royal family who serves as commander of the kingdom’s royal guard and head of Bahrain’s national youth and sports council. On the team’s official website, leaders acknowledge that the squad “represents a powerful platform for showcasing the ambition, optimism and global outlook of the Kingdom of Bahrain.” Rights groups charge that the team serves to distract from longstanding systemic human rights abuses in Bahrain, where authorities have cracked down on political dissent, arbitrarily arrested opposition figures, and effectively eliminated freedom of expression since widespread pro-democracy protests in 2011. This is not the first time that human rights groups have raised alarms about Team Bahrain Victorious: Bird sent a formal letter to the UCI back in 2019 calling on the governing body to publish the results of an ethical review into the team and to take human rights concerns into account when considering future license renewals. At the time, the UCI dismissed the request, saying that “the question of whether the government of Bahrain mistreats its citizens and its athletes in particular, is clearly beyond the jurisdiction of our Commission.” Carlen says that response is no longer acceptable, and that the UCI has a responsibility to act ahead of this year’s Tour. “The UCI cannot continue to allow state-backed teams to use its highly popular and historic competition to advance their own political interests,” he said. “Cycling as a sport has an opportunity here to set a precedent and put the focus back on the competition rather than an association with human rights violations.”