Professional cycling calls itself a global sport, but its media coverage almost exclusively and not surprisingly focuses on Western Europe.

Dan Challis has taken a different approach. The journalist behind The Global Peloton – now at Escape Collective – joins the RIDING WITH podcast to talk about what it actually takes for a rider from Africa, Asia, or the Americas to break into the WorldTour — and why the formal pipelines that have worked in the past (Qhubeka in Africa, Androni and Colombia–Coldeportes in South America) keep collapsing rather than scaling.

Why has Japan, despite wealth and a massive cycling culture, never produced a WorldTour rider, and why India’s 2.5-million-spectator Pune Grand Tour might be the start of something real.

Of course, we cannot discuss these issues without diving into sportswashing and the financial chain reaction now destabilizing teams across the WorldTour, from Arkéa’s collapse to Movistar’s potential restructuring.

We revisit the Vuelta a España protests, talk about the future of cycling journalism, and make some bold Tour de France predictions.

Dan Challis

Escape Collective

Cycling Weekly

You can find Dan on Instagram and LinkedIn.

The World Cup is underway. And if you’re looking for someone who saw all of this coming — the sovereign wealth funds buying clubs, the exorbitant costs of fandom, the collision of soccer and authoritarian soft power — Franklin Foer did. Twenty-two years ago.

Foer is a national correspondent at The Atlantic, a former editor of The New Republic, and the author of How Soccer Explains the World — a book that used the game as a lens to dissect the forces of globalization long before most American sports writers thought soccer was worth covering. He also is the author of World Without Mind, about Big Tech’s takeover of culture, and The Last Politician, about Joe Biden.

Today we talk about what the book got right, what it missed, what Trump and FIFA have in common, and why the World Cup — more than any other sporting event — is a Rorschach test for the world we actually live in.

Of course, there’s a cycling angle.

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With cycling’s World Championships underway in Kigali, Rwanda, this week, I spoke with my old friend, Mvemba Dizolele, a highly-regarded foreign policy analyst, about the role of sports in diplomacy and politics. (Take the time to read Mvemba’s full bio here.)

For background on the issues facing Rwanda, Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch, who is a friend of the RIDING WITH podcast, has a terrific dispatch about Rwanda’s human rights violations and the role it plays in the conflicts in Congo and Sudan.

John Prendergast, a leading human rights advocate who has worked for decades to cast light on genocide and conflict, has this piece in Foreign Policy about how Rwanda has used sports partnerships to enhance its reputation in global politics.

Dizolele offers listeners a quick history of Rwanda, how the country fits into today’s geopolitics, and how consumers and companies can alter the behavior and policies of countries seeking the benefits of hosting prestigious sporting events like cycling’s World Championships.