From cobblestones to cohesion: the role of professional cycling in the development of social capital in Flanders, Belgium

Abstract

Although a large literature links mass sports events to elements of social capital arena-based sports with worldwide popularity like football, no studies have previously considered whether such associations can be found for sports that are specifically popular in particular regions. Here, we focus on cycling in Belgium. During the spring of each year, a unique type of one-day professional cycling race is organised in Belgium and France: cobblestone races (e.g. Tour of Flanders). These are very popular among the public in Flanders, Belgium because of their long history and current Belgian cyclists’ strong performances in them. We focus on a key element of social capital: trust in others. Using online survey data from a long-running study by the Flemish Government (N = 33,671), we analyse whether Belgian cyclists’ performances in and television ratings of cobblestone races are associated with various types of trust among the Flemish public. Results indicate that strong Belgian performances in cobblestone races are associated with greater neighbourhood trust, while high television ratings are also associated with greater trust. Some of these effects are moderated by age and gender. We discuss the implications of our findings and avenues of future research on the role of locally popular sports in the development of social capital.

Keywords:

• Social capital
• cycling
• trust
• social cohesion
• Belgium
• road racing

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the study department of the Flemish Government for sharing the Socio-Cultural Shifts in Flanders-dataset.

Disclosure statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

1 One well-known cobblestone race is organized in the north of France in the middle of April: Paris-Roubaix. Due to the proximity of the course of this race to the Belgian border and its similarity to the Flemish cobblestone races, it is also highly popular in Flanders (Van Reeth, 2015).

2 Between 2000 and 2018, the shortest fieldwork period was 111 days and the longest one was 149 days. As a result, the fieldwork always extended either well past the cobblestone classics or started after they had finished (Barbier et al., 2017).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.