The United Arab Emirates stunned the professional cycling world Sunday as a Team Emirates rider won the overall award at France’s premier stage race. The team’s victory arrives only three years after it secured funding from UAE-based sponsors. Their investment joins a string of recent Middle East sponsorships and points to cycling’s gradually growing popularity among the region’s businesses.
This year, a record three of the 22 teams that competed in the Tour de France were from the region (UAE, Bahrain and Israel). And coincidentally, all three of those countries signed normalization agreements last week at the White House.
