Gaza Sunbirds: The Palestinian para-cycling team racing against the odds to compete internationally

We’re in Oostende on the Belgian coast. It’s early May but it’s grey, it’s cold and the North Sea looks furious – the white-topped waves whipped up by extremely high winds. Rain is smashing into our faces, almost horizontally. Great time for a bike race… not least, the first international competition for the Gaza Sunbirds, a para-cycling team from the embattled Gaza Strip.

With winds on the seafront road that hosts the start/finish line hurtling onto shore at over 50km, making it difficult to walk straight, not least cycle with one leg, the organisers of the 2024 UCI Para-cycling Road World Cup wisely decide to postpone for a few hours. Para-cyclists have travelled from all corners of the globe to compete in the biggest event of the annual para-cycling calendar, and riders scuttle away to their team enclosures to train on stationary bikes until the racing resumes.

The team, which has undoubtedly travelled furthest to get here – even if not geographically – is the Gaza Sunbirds. Until recently, most of the team was living in tents, among over 85 per cent of Gazans who have been displaced from their homes by Israeli Occupation Forces. Many of the Sunbirds’ homes, businesses and all the equipment in the team’s storage facility have been destroyed by the relentless and indiscriminate bombing campaign.

After months of negotiations with Palestinian sporting and political factions; an international diplomatic effort; approval from the Palestinian, Israeli and Egyptian governments; and handing over huge amounts of dollars in cash to a front company for the Egyptian security services, three Sunbirds managed a nail-biting evacuation to Cairo in late April, just in time to secure visas for the race in Belgium.

But here they are: about to compete on the world stage for the first time. Putting their wheels on the start line at an official UCI (cycling’s international governing body) race means the Sunbirds have just two more bureaucratic hurdles to achieve their dream of racing for Palestine at the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games.

The journey of the Sunbirds begins way back in 2018: Ala’a al-Dali is a cheerful 20-year-old Gazan road cycling champion who dreams of racing against Mark Cavendish at the Olympics. After his invitations to compete internationally, including the Asian Games in Jakarta, are repeatedly denied by Israel and Egypt, Ala’a joins the first day of the peaceful March of Return protests against the blockade of Gaza. Standing 200m from the border fence, wearing his cycling lycra and holding his bike as a symbol of freedom, Ala’a’s life is catastrophically changed forever by an illegal explosive round fired by an Israeli sniper.

Denied a pass for medical treatment abroad by the Israelis, Ala’a’s leg has to be amputated and he sinks into despair, his Olympic dreams shattered. But learning to cycle again with one leg is the start of Ala’a’s journey back from the brink. At the under-resourced rehabilitation centre, Ala’a meets seven other conflict amputees struggling with their rudimentary prosthetics, who eventually become the Gaza Sunbirds para-cycling team.

“I had a dream of being a champion with both legs,” Ala’a explains. “After my amputation, I am determined to be a champion for Palestine with one. It is our duty to rise to the obstacles of our ongoing struggle. We ride to show the world our resilience, to bring hope home and to inspire people through our stories. We are riding for freedom.”

The Gaza Strip’s longest road is just 35km of broken concrete, pock-marked with shell holes. There are no hills, so the team ride with their brakes on to simulate climbing. Basic equipment is almost impossible to acquire: team members train in flip-flops; tyres and inner tubes come through the black market at vastly inflated prices; and importing carbon fibre frames is banned for fear they be converted into rocket launchers.

Building a para-cycling team in this context seems like folly. But, in 2020, when Ala’a is connected with Karim Ali, a Palestinian scientist living in London, the pair concoct a seemingly impossible dream – representing Palestine at the 2024 Paris Paralympics – and the Gaza Sunbirds are born.

“Growing up in exile, it wasn’t the easiest to connect with the politics of my Palestinian heritage,” Karim reflects. “When I came to study in London, the taste of political freedom immersed me in the world of Palestinian liberation. My friends and I started two national movements in two years. When I translated Ala’a’s documentary, his ability to dream despite the huge costs convinced me I had to work with him. Building this team together has taken over my life, my heart is in a place I’ve never had the chance to visit, that I hope to one day call home.”

Karim’s attempt to visit his ancestral homeland in 2022 ends with 24 hours of detention at Tel Aviv airport and deportation. But this only makes him more determined. Karim rides across Britain to fundraise, securing a vital first sponsorship deal. Both the blockade and Gaza’s internal politics require skill to navigate: sporting bureaucracy and West Bank/Gaza and Fatah/Hamas rivalries often prove the greatest obstacle to overcome. Blockade means even a simple bank transfer can take months, yet Karim develops ingenious ways to get funds, equipment and more recently, humanitarian aid, to the team.

With long-distance support from Karim as Team Manager and International Coordinator and Directeur Sportif Abu Ali on the ground in Gaza, the Sunbirds begin to make real progress. Weddings, new-born babies and a global pandemic all present more bumps in the road. But the Sunbirds keep pedalling forward – even helping to make a cultural shift around disability in Gaza. Paris 2024 begins to feel possible.

October 7 changes everything. As Israel pummels Gaza with air-strikes then launches a ground invasion, many of the team have to flee their homes. Training and competition are put on hold as the struggle

to survive becomes harder each day. Karim goes into overdrive: quitting his job to focus on the Sunbirds around the clock and coordinating a global network of volunteers, sponsors and activists. A core group of Sunbirds based between Khan Yunis and Rafah responds to the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe by cycling to deliver, to-date, over $350,000 of dietary parcels, hot meals and other vital supplies, such as maternity and sanitary packages, to support their community.

In April, Karim and the team’s efforts finally pay off and the Sunbirds’ most promising athlete, 24-year-old para-cyclist and footballer Abu Asfour, makes it out to Egypt – followed, on the last possible day, by Ala’a, Abu Ali and three other Palestinian Cycling Federation (PCF) appointees.

It’s almost impossible to comprehend that the windswept seafront in Oostende inhabits the same planet as Gaza, where the stream of images of destruction, death and war crimes remains unceasing – after more

than six months. Each of the Sunbirds take to Friday’s time trial course individually, and after battling against the winds over an unrelenting 10km up and back along the seafront, Ala’a posts a second-from-last time, with Abu Asfour two places ahead in 26th.

During Sunday’s road race in the sunshine, there’s a huge group of Palestinian supporters waving giant flags, who get to watch Abu Asfour performing spectacularly – coming 22nd out of 29 riders in the road race, just two places short of winning points. Despite living in a tent a month before the race and having lost 10kg since the start of the war, he places above other riders who had considerable support teams and months to train.

With Ala’a so far from top-form, Abu Asfour’s strong performance puts him as the frontrunner for the team’s sole Paralympic Wild Card spot – which is to be submitted to the UCI in June. The Sunbirds are riding high and celebrate the result at a dinner hosted by the local Palestinian solidarity community. But later that day, Israeli tanks finally roll into Rafah and Gaza’s last sanctuary is carpet-bombed by warplanes. The team spend a tense night on their phones, organising tents and evacuations for their families, and hearing about friends and relatives whose homes have been destroyed.

The next morning, Abu Asfour has disappeared. On the journey to Brussels to chase up their Italian visas for the next UCI World Cup Race in Maniago, Italy later in May, the three PCF appointees also disappear while changing trains in Bruges. After a heated discussion between Abu Ali, Ala’a and Karim about what to do next, Ala’a sits with his head in hands, then spends the rest of the journey looking out of the window in silence.

The following afternoon, Ala’a has a tense conversation over the phone with his wife, who, like many of the team’s family members, is pressuring him to return to Gaza. The same day, a video appears of an Israeli tank crushing the ‘I Love Gaza’ sign as the IOF occupies the Rafah border. The slim chances the team had to return the way they came are totally wiped out. Later, we find out that the missing team members are applying for asylum in Belgium.

The Italian Embassy keeps the remaining team waiting until the very last minute for their visas, meaning Ala’s misses the time trial in Maniago and arrives less than 24 hours before the road race. With nothing like the time to prepare properly, Ala’a finishes last. But he finishes – visibly in pain, on the verge of tears and is mobbed by the international press. He composes himself and answers their questions like a true sportsman – and like the ambassador for Gaza that he is fast becoming.

Representing Palestine by racing at the Paris Games would be a historic statement of Gaza’s endurance. But right now, as Rafah burns, the survival of Ala’a and the teams’ families trumps any concerns about para-cycling. Yet, with no road back for the Sunbirds, the only path is forward. “It is true that you [the Israelis] slaughtered us and amputated all of our legs,” Ala’a reflects. “But you didn’t amputate our resolve or our dreams. We will walk our path and raise the Palestinian flag on one leg.”

The encouragement from the Sunbirds left in Gaza powers Ala’a to do everything he can to rack up as many points as possible for Paralympic qualification, in what little remains of the season. At this point, it’s a mathematical certainty that Ala’a is unable to acquire sufficient points required for automatic Paralympic selection. But there remains one last route to Paris: through the Wild Card system. So, in June, the team arrives in Almaty, Kazakhstan for the Asian Para-cycling Road Championships – to show their determination to go all the way.

After a torturous wait, with discussions going down to the wire, Ala’a is eventually denied his Wild Card entry to the Paralympics. Yet, refusing to be bowed, in Zurich, Switzerland in late September, he makes history at the UCI Road and Para-Cycling World Championships; a first World Championship appearance for Palestine. But even as Ala’a crosses the finish line, only one thought consumes him: “How can I reunite with my family?”

The Gaza Sunbirds present Cycle-In Cinema, an evening of film, music, artisan crafts and dancing to support their aid missions in Gaza, hosted with Palestine House, London, Sunday December 15 - from 18:00.

This is an updated version of this story appeared in Huck 81. Get your copy here.

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