For the thousands of riders who lined up at the 2024 Bolero UCI Gravel World Championships in Flanders, Belgium, at the weekend, the race was part of a season-long programme. To perform to their best, they had prepared meticulously, worked on their weak points, and learned from past mistakes with the desire of improving their performance.
The same can be said of the team behind the event’s sustainability initiatives.
As Kevin McMullan, Impact Manager at EventFlanders, points out: “It’s important to have a systemic and thorough approach to sustainability so you can achieve better results event after event. We have a whole methodology we developed so for every event we map long-term goals for the event to contribute to. Then we evaluate that event on how it managed to achieve those impact ambitions.”
Kevin McMullan is a member of the Sustainability Working Group which drew up a sustainability plan for the Bolero UCI Gravel World Championships, organised by Golazo Sports. Dutch company Green Events gave their feedback on the plan and are now preparing an evaluation of its different aspects. As well as calculating the event’s CO2 emissions, it will look at some 13 areas ranging from water use, energy use, catering, and materials to social aspects such as accessibility, inclusion, fair play and safety.
As Kevin McMullan points out, an event such as the Bolero UCI Gravel World Championships throws up its own challenges compared to many festivals and cultural events: “It’s quite difficult, and different from a festival where you’re always in the same location, at the same venue and at the same time of year. It’s easier to measure and progress if you have the same basis to work from every time.”
He points to the protection of biodiversity as a particular challenge for the event in Flanders. The races went through some of the country’s most valuable and protected natural areas, which are part of the European-wide Natura 2000 network. A representative of the local forest protection organisation, the Agency for Nature and Forests (ANB), is a necessary and valuable member of the Sustainability Working Group, according to Kevin McMullan: “They’ve been involved since the very beginning. This event is a big ask for them. They were skeptical. And rightly so. So it was important for us to get this right. We didn’t want a lot of people spread out in the forest, trampling on vegetation and making a lot of noise.”
To minimise the negative impact on the Nature Reserve, the aim was to attract spectators away from the forests and into fan zones that were equipped with big screens and were strategically placed so fans could see riders pass multiple times.
Did that work? The answer will come from data collected via a mobile operator that counted how many people were in the forest. This will be compared with a manual count of the number of spectators in the fan zones. Data is also being collected concerning the number of visitors to the Forests of Brabant the weekend before and the weekend after the event.
“We’ll be able to compare the three weekends and see what the impact was of the Championships. Before the event, we had no idea how many people would come and where they would be positioned. Although it is not the first UCI Gravel World Championships, it is a first for Flanders. And like for many cycling events, Flanders attracts more people than in other venues because we’re cycling mad.”
Each of the 13 areas in the event’s sustainability plan will be evaluated on a scale of one to five, one being the strict minimum. This will enable EventFlanders to concentrate on areas that receive a lower score when they prepare a future event, for example the 2025 UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships in Ronse next August.
Kevin McMullan sums up: ‘At EventFlanders, we see major events as leverages to create long-term impact. We work hard to maximise the positive economic, reputational and social impacts of our events, while at the same time try to minimise the negative ecological impacts. If the balance isn’t right, why bother with hosting events in the first place?”