It’s Friday afternoon, a month out from the UCI Road World Championships, and Samson Ndayishimiye, head of the Rwandan Cycling Federation (FERWACY), has ducked out of a meeting to speak to me.
“I have had hundreds of thousands of meetings as we are double and triple checking everything ahead of Kigali 2025,” he says.
Steeped in more than 100 years of history, this year’s Road World Championships will be held from September 21-29 in Kigali, Rwanda, and it marks a culmination of six year’s work from bidding for the right to host the blue riband cycling event for the first time on African soil, in what had been a dream for President of the Union Cycliste Internationale, David Lappartient.
Why Rwanda?
A number of countries expressed an interest in holding this week-long international road cycling competition, though in the end, it was only Morocco and Rwanda that submitted a formal bid.
The North African country lost out to Rwanda in the vote, and while Morocco may have boasted decent infrastructure, Rwanda also had the track record after having hosted the Tour of Rwanda, UCI 2.1 since 2009, as well as having a strong cycling fan base.
Photos of the crowds of roads lined with crowds, notably as the international peloton scales the Mur de Kigali, a famous and challenging cobbled climb located in the capital city that will be one of the centre points of this Worlds circuit, have become akin to…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…