Why no Ethnic Riders in Tour de France?

I think it stems from the fact that few young people with Asian or
Afro-Caribean background ride bikes as a serious pass-time. Here in West
Yorkshire there is a large Asian population yet I can't recall seeing any
Asians riding bikes (apart from bombing around cities on BMXs and MTBs). I
think its because ethnic groups don't ride bikes for sport as much as
whites - therefore since the chance for any cyclist actually being good
enough to get a ride in the TdF is small, for a minority group it is very,
very small indeed.

As a school teacher in a Bradford school, of 1800 predominantly white
pupils, I am aware of only one competitive cyclist - he does not know of any
others in the school. her's a white kid of Hungarian descent. Some of the
reasons are almost certainly cultural - amongst the asian lads, if they want
to participate in sport they go for cricket but from their late teens they
have a fixation on fast cars and Max Power magazine. The Afro-Caribbean
contingent are keen on footie, cricket and body building to accommodate the
bling bling they hope to wear. A simplistic view I know but there is really
little or no interest in cycling amongst the majority of kids irrespective
of racial heritage.

As a darkie, I can not give an insight as to why my interest and involvement
with cycling has such a strong grip on me. I never competed as a youth
despite the entreaties of a chap from Spartan Wheelers cycling club from
Darlington trying to recruit me as a member. I was not a team player and
prefered one on one competion and enjoyed destroying one or two junior
members of the club on long rides. I am used to being the sole non-white in
many of the hobbies that I participate in - skin colour hase never been an
issue with club/society members. My latest potential interest will challenge
many pre-conceptions - bag pipe playing :-)

One also needs to remember that the recruitment pool for ethnic minority
sportsmen is a small percentage of the UK and probably European population.
If once scales from how many successful white cycling youths are migrating
to teams from the white populations and then apply that to the ethnic
minority population you may well end up with a fraction of a single rider
:-)