We're thrilled to have supported the 2022 UCI international Andover Supercross cyclocross races showing that inclusion helps all levels of cycling grow!
The event was directly paid for by our wonderful community of LGBT+ people and allies through earlier sales of our awesome Rainbow Socks. Check out posts from the race on Instagram!
#RainbowLaces
Our first event with rainbow socks at Clanfield Cross 2021 was a huge success and we're thrilled with the super high participation in the men's and women's elite races! Check out our highlights on Instagram (@all.in.racing) for all the great posts people have shared from the event and from getting their own pair of rainbow socks!
ALL IN racing is a new initiative within competitive cycling to increase visibility and inclusion for LGBT+ riders and which aims to become a standard for championing diversity in amateur and professional racing.
We will provide free resources for LGBT+ athletes and allies and will work with teams and brands to help grow competitive cycling by making it a more open and inclusive sport.
If you are an individual, team or brand and would like to know more or get involved please get in touch below!
Challenges:
LGBT+ inclusivity in cycling lags behind the sport’s responses to gender, race and disability. Homophobic language use in sport is still high and, in the UK, amateur and semi-professional competitive cycling maintains a traditionally macho lad culture that is not welcoming of ‘other’ people.
The current environment does not make competitive cycling attractive for LGBT+ people and puts pressure on LGBT+ people to hide or change their identity in order to survive in the sport.
LGBT+ people are, on average, less active and more likely to suffer from poor mental health including depression and attempted suicide than the general population.
Many brands, teams and organisations are unsure how to engage with the LGBT+ community for fear of efforts being dismissed as tokenism.
Solutions:
We all know the myriad benefits sport has to our mental and physical health. ALL IN racing provides a vehicle for companies and teams to engage meaningfully with the LGBT+ community and become a force for positive change within the sport.
The main tenets of the initiative are set out below - they're designed to be easy to engage with and are built upon basic principles of human decency. It's simple, common sense stuff and is within reach of everybody to get involved in!
Together we can make cycling a more comfortable place for those LGBT+ people already embedded within it and we can help the sport grow by making it more attractive to disengaged minorities to get new people to the start line.
Our framework:
For teams:
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Stop the casual use of homophobic language in sport
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Follow a few basic guidelines on being good allies to LGBT+ people
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Participate in inclusivity events
For brands:
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Where appropriate, dedicate proportional sponsorship resources to minority groups
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Share and elevate LGBT+ and minority voices
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Promote outreach in advertising to LGBT+ communities
Get in touch!
Now is the perfect time to get involved - we can all have an input and can shape the initiative together. Every voice deserves to be heard.
If you're LGBT+ and have experiences to share (good and bad) and thoughts on what you'd like to see to make the sport more inclusive, I want to hear from you!
If you're an ally or represent a team and you recognise the challenges and want to be part of the conversation about what improvements we can make, I want to hear from you!
If you represent a company, large or small, and want to be part of the conversation about engaging meaningfully with the LGBT+ community, I want to hear from you!
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All communication will be treated in strict confidence, and absolutely none of your details or identifiable specifics will be shared without your explicit written permission. All the contact fields below are optional and you are free to contribute entirely anonymously if you want.
About me:
I’m Josh, an amateur racer based in Cambridge, UK. I’ve been cycling for nine years and earned an Elite British Cycling road racing licence in 2016 before switching to focus on cyclocross. I've also added some MTB to the mix since 2019.
Racing has given me a lot of great experiences, but these have often been set in a culture that did not feel particularly inclusive. The ALL IN racing initiative has sprung from my drive to help improve the status quo and make the sport more welcoming to people like me, whilst also generating new value for the industry and amateur and semi-professional teams.
References & recommended reading:
Out on the Fields - groups of studies specifically on LGBTQ+ inclusivity in sports, including 2020 studies on homophobic language use:
Pride Sports 2016 study for Sport England on LGBT+ participation in sport:
https://www.sportengland.org/know-your-audience/demographic-knowledge/lgbtq?section=research
The National LGB&T Partnership: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Trans People and Physical Activity: What You Need To Know
Out on the pitch: sport and mental health in LGBT people - University of Strathclyde 2019 study
Kantar Consulting 2018 study on the commercial value of the LGBT+ community in the US: