As we spoke over Zoom from his hotel room in France, Sylvan Adams was waiting for the results to come in at the end of that day’s stage of the Tour de France to see how Pascal Ackermann, a German-born rider on the Israel Premier Tech team, had done.

“Damn! Ackermann has sixth. Damn!” said Adams, co-owner of the team and an acclaimed cyclist himself. “I wasn’t sure if it was fifth or sixth.” (Ackermann has since improved his standings, coming in third place on Sunday.)

The Tour de France, which kicked off last month and runs through the end of this week, represents the first of two major cycling events that Israeli riders will compete in, the second being the Paris Olympics, in which four Israeli athletes will compete in five cycling categories — Itamar Einhorn in the men’s road race, Rotem Gafinovitz in the women’s road race, Tomer Zaltsman in the men’s mountain biking and Mikhail Iakovlev in the men’s sprint and keirin. This will be the first time that Israel has had a rider in the men’s road race in 64 years, since Henry Ohayon and Yitzhak (Jacques) Ben David raced in the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics. (At that time, there were no qualifications needed and every country could send someone; this is the first time since entry requirements were introduced that Israel has a rider.)

This summer therefore marks the pinnacle of Israeli cycling — but, as Adams told eJewishPhilanthropy with a grin: “We are just getting started. We will reach for the moon.”

Adams was born in Quebec, Canada, to Marcel and Annie Adams, the former a Holocaust survivor who founded the successful real estate development firm Iberville Developments. Though Adams said that the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel have prompted a pivot in his philanthropic giving, until now much of his focus has been on sport in Israel, particularly cycling. 

Adams, who pledged $100 million to Ben-Gurion University in the Negev in December, said he is also working on a number of advocacy-related projects in coordination with the Israeli government. 

“I’m not at liberty to talk about them right now,” he said. “But I think it’s [an area] of critical importance, and ultimately, whatever is done has to be done under the auspices of the Israeli government.”

Adams got involved in cycling later in life, first starting to race at age 41. (He’s now 65 and has won nine Canadian national titles in the sport and four world titles.) “I didn’t even know about cycling until I started competing myself,” he said.

The real estate mogul’s efforts in Israel began roughly a decade ago with the construction of an Olympic-size velodrome in Tel Aviv, the only such indoor track cycling facility in the Middle East, which broke ground in 2016 and opened two years later.

Before construction of the velodrome even began, an Israeli investor and cycling enthusiast Ron Bar-On, who had co-founded the Israel Premier Tech in 2014 with Ran Margaliot, contacted Adams about getting involved with the team. “He asked me to come and be on the board,” Adams recalled. (He is now a co-owner of the team with Bar-On.)

Around the same time, Adams started working to bring the Giro D’Italia race to Israel, which he did in 2018. 

In large part because of Adams — and in some cases, in full part because of him — the past six years have seen major advancements in Israeli cycling, allowing it to compete on an international level.

“The velodrome was a serious game changer. That’s what’s allowing us to compete in the Olympics,” Dani Oren, the head of the elite sport department at Israel’s Wingate Institute, told eJP. “But beyond the field of cycling, there’s also the institute that he founded at Tel Aviv University [the Sylvan Adams Sports Center]. There’s no doubt that he’s contributed greatly to Israeli sport.”

Tooting his own horn, Adams said that the development program that he and his team have created is putting Israeli teams “at the highest level of its sport.”

“So yes, Maccabi Tel Aviv can be in the European championships of basketball ut everybody knows the NBA is the highest level of basketball. In cycling, that’s the Tour de France. And like I said, I’m here in France at the moment with my team,” he said. “People always ask me, ‘Is this your dream?’ No, this is not my dream. I don’t dream. I make a plan and I execute.”

His goal with his donations toward Israeli sports is to put the country front and center on the world stage in a positive light. “Our best answer to the haters is to win. How can we frustrate them any more?” he said.

“We carry the name Israel. That’s the name on the front of the jersey. When we do something good in a Tour de France stage, let’s say, they can say the word Israel 150 times,” Adams said.

Sport competitions are also some of the most-watched events in the world, particularly cycling. “There’s nothing bigger than the Olympic Games, for example. The second biggest thing is soccer. And the third biggest thing is the Tour de France, believe it or not,” he said, adding that “over 2 billion people watch the Tour de France.” (That figure is contested, but even more conservative estimates put global viewership in the hundreds of millions, making it more popular than the Super Bowl.)

Adams, who will remain in France throughout the race and also attend the Olympics, said that so far he has not seen any anti-Israel demonstrators at the Tour de France.

“I ride every day because the roads are all closed, and I have a pass that enables me to ride on closed roads,” he said. “[Spectators] come early and they’re sitting on their lawn chairs, drinking beer, doing whatever they do… And they see me coming by with the word Israel on my jersey, and, of course, they’re fans of the sport, so they all start [chanting] ‘Israel! Israel!’”

Adams said that the team remains concerned of anti-Israel protesters disrupting the event, which would reflect poorly on the team. “So we keep our fingers crossed not to have an incident,” he said. 

Going forward, Adams hopes that the system that he and the Israel Premier Tech will allow Israel to develop into a cycling superpower. Israel Premier Tech now has two teams, a World Tour team and a lower-ranked Continental team, which Adams compared to a “AAA ball” team that feeds into the “major league” world tour team. 

“By the way, it’s a very large undertaking. I think we have 127 people working for the team,” he said. 

To identify candidates for the Continental team, Israel Premier Tech uses scouts to track talented up-and-comers in local groups. “We have our pick of these riders. Everybody wants to ride for our team, of course. We’re the first professional cycling team from Israel that competes internationally,” he said. 

“We definitely have the momentum to keep going. We’re just scratching the surface right now. And we’re going to have the day we have a top flight Israeli cyclist who wins bike races on a regular basis,” Adams said. “The day we have one of the one of those,

I think it will be a game changer within the country.”