"Embarassing" - Tour Down Under Cyclists Wondering Why Ever-Hotter Race Sponsored By Oil/Gas Company Santos
The first time Maeve Plouffe trained in the heat, she was in Paris in the lead-up to the Olympics. It was supposed to be an easy ride to help get used to the conditions. When she returned, she fainted from heat sickness. “That’s how badly I was affected,” she says. “Racing in extreme heat is like playing chicken with your environment.”
What was once a speciality has now become standard, the Australian Olympic cyclist says, especially ahead of big races such as the Tour Down Under that are known for intense conditions. Training starts a month in advance, up to three times a week, and takes place in a glass box roughly the size of a small conference room within the South Australian Sports Institute. Sessions run for an hour, during which the chamber is heated to between 36C and 40C to simulate riding for extended periods in extreme heat, in service of mentally and physically preparing competitors for extreme conditions.
“Racing in it feels like your whole body is encapsulated in heat,” Plouffe says. “Everything just deteriorates so fast and there’s no relief from it.” Cycling as a sport is particularly vulnerable to its environment, especially as climate change pushes extremes to grow more intense. That reality is beginning to force an uneasy conversation within the sport about its relationship with fossil fuel producers such as the Australian oil and gas company Santos, sponsor of the Tour Down Under, which begins on 16 January.
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Matt Rendell, a former Tour De France commentator who has been working with the Badvertising campaign, says the economics of cycling have made the sport “an unexpected locus of this rearguard propaganda activity by the fossil fuel industry”, and the way contracts work means athletes often are not free to raise concerns. “Cycling is cheap and the bicycle has impeccable environmental credentials,” Rendell says. “These companies want to associate themselves with cycling because it allows them to associate themselves with the environment, the photography, the imagery, the dream of the wilderness and peak physical human performance.” There is also a complex relationship between races and the cities that host them, he says, with race organisers reliant on the goodwill of local authorities for access to roads and public infrastructure. Santos is the biggest company with headquarters in Adelaide, underlining the race’s South Australian identity.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jan/12/cycling-extreme-heat-tour-down-under-fossil-fuel-sponsorship