Israel enters uncharted territory on Friday when it begins hosting the three opening stages of the Giro d'Italia, the biggest international sporting event to be held in the country.
The three-week-long Giro, along with the Tour de France and Spain's Vuelta comprise the world's three major cycling tournaments and the Italian race's "Big Start" in Israel will mark the first time a cycling classic has included stages outside Europe.
Sylvan Adams, a Canadian-born Israeli entrepreneur and cycling enthusiast credited with bringing Giro d'Italia to Israel, has set up the Israel Cycling Academy team that will compete in the race. It includes two Israeli riders, another first.
"The Giro d'Italia is the largest sports event ever to be held in Israel," Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev said, "This is a huge production and an unprecedented logistical operation."
The 101st Giro opens with a 9.7-kilometer individual time trial on Friday in Jerusalem followed by road races on the next two days between Haifa and Tel Aviv (167 kilometers) and then Beersheba and Eilat (229 kilometers).
The event has also attracted state funding aimed at boosting tourism by exposing the country to about a billion TV viewers. Tourism Ministry Director General Amir Halevi said it was hoped that an investment of several million euros would yield a much larger return.
As part of a cycling drive, Adams has also backed the building of a new velodrome in Tel Aviv, which was unveiled on Tuesday. He said he hoped Israel would copy the British model and make it a cycling power.
"We are hoping to take a page out of British cycling, who became the world's pre-eminent cycling power after they built their velodrome in Manchester and the National Cycling Center ... so we are hoping to develop cycling among the youth and reach the highest levels of the sport," Adams said.
This year's race has been dedicated to the memory of Gino Bartali, one of Italy's great cyclists who won the Giro in 1936, 1937 and 1946, and the Tour de France in 1938 and 1948. He was honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial on Wednesday.
During World War II, Bartali, who died in 2000, deceived soldiers who assumed he was training, and helped save Jews from deportation to death camps by smuggling counterfeit identity documents past Fascist and Nazi checkpoints.
Israeli team is the underdog
Yoni Yarom, head of the Israeli Cycling Federation, said there were some 2,200 competitive riders in Israel and a cycling culture has developed over the years, with more than 165,000 enthusiasts at all levels.
Of the 22 teams competing in this year's Giro d'Italia, the Israel Cycling Academy squad has perhaps the most at stake.
Israel's first pro cycling team is the event's undoubted underdog, and while team officials say they hope to win a stage or two, their ultimate goal is far loftier – to parlay their maiden participation in the historic hosting of a Grand Tour event start into a launching pad for cycling to become the country's national sport.
The team, established less than four years ago, received one of the four wild-card invitations by race organizers, ahead of some far more established squads. They will race with the 18 Pro Tour teams that get automatic entry into an event that is second only to the Tour de France in prestige.
The Giro "wild cards" are special invites for teams that do not usually race at the Grand Tour level.
"This would have been literally unthinkable just a few years ago," said Ran Margaliot, the team's 30-year-old manager. "We had this 'start-up' idea of penetrating the national agenda as quickly as possible."
Margaliot was motivated to spark a grass-roots movement following his own crushed dreams of becoming a world-class cyclist. While bike riding is a popular Israeli hobby, competitive cycling has been mostly an afterthought amid a sporting landscape dominated by soccer, basketball and judo.
The team is co-owned by Adams, who is sparing no effort to revolutionize the sport in Israel. For him, the team has a far more important goal than merely being competitive. He said it offers a chance to be ambassadors for the sport in Israel and ambassadors for Israel to the world.
The team is also unique in the cycling world since it relies primarily on philanthropic funding. It says it has its eyes set on making the Spanish Vuelta next year and the Tour de France in 2020. But first, it hopes for a respectable showing in the Israeli leg of the Giro.
The ICA team's best cyclists are Ben Hermans, 31, of Belgium and Reuben Plaza, 38, of Spain, who has previously won stages in both the Vuelta and the Tour. In all, it is made up of 24 riders from 16 countries, including five Israelis, two of whom will race in the Giro.
The multinational makeup looked to boost the team's image as a melting pot for cyclists and project an image of "normalcy" to the world. But that took a blow when, under severe anti-Israeli pressure in his home country, a Turkish member of the team was forced to quit.
Team member Guy Niv, who transitioned from mountain biking only a year ago, said his goal was to make it to the finish line in Rome so Israel's budding young cyclists would have the kind of role model to look up to that he did not have as a kid.
"I hope we look back in a few years at the Giro as a turning point for the sport in Israel," he said. "We hope the Giro will change the culture of Israeli cycling."
To highlight their underdog status, the team held one of its last training sessions before the Giro in the Elah Valley near Jerusalem, overlooking what is believed to be the spot of the biblical battle of David versus Goliath.
Margaliot said it was symbolic regardless of how the team fares.
"This is the place where all Israeli riders come to train and climb. That's where our Israelis riding in the Giro, Guy Sagiv and Guy Niv, started out racing, so for us, it's coming full circle," Margaliot said. "Here we are on the verge of Israel's greatest cycling moment."
