If you’re like me, you may have done a double take in some of the early season races this year when you saw double. Lotte Kopecky is (for the next few days) the current road world champion–but a certain AG Insurance – Soudal Team rider seemed to also sport the rainbow bands.
That rider is Kim Le Court-Pienaar, who’s had an incredible season and is now one of the favourites for Saturday’s road race.
In 2024, it was clear the pro, who hails from Mauritius, was a strong rider. She took a big win at the Giro d’Italia Women. In 2025, she upped her game, taking stage wins at the Tour de France Femmes and several yellow jerseys. She also took a fantastic win earlier in the year at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The road worlds course is similar to a race like Liège, with its tough, punchy cobbled climbs, so Le Court-Pienaar will be one to watch.
Another win she took in 2025 was the Mauritian national championship–both the road and time trial.
Mauritius is a small island nation in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, with a population of just 1.27 million. It’s a beautiful place. The national cycling championships aren’t exactly super stacked–there were 5 riders in the women’s races, and 10 in the men’s, but hey, a win is a win. Especially when it comes to wearing the coveted national championships jersey. But who cares, the place looks like paradise.
Which leads to the double take. The Mauritius flag has four bars: red, blue, yellow and green. So that means the national championship jersey, in almost all cases (there are a few exceptions), is supposed to resemble the flag. That means a jersey with a four-barred design–with those four colours on a white background.
Likewise, the rainbow jersey is instantly recognizable, with horizontal bands of blue, red, black, yellow, and green running across a white base.
Le Court-Pienaar also has a Specialized helmet to match her jersey as well.
So, if the Mauritian champ were to win the world championship–which, as you could guess, would be an absolute historic first. No African has ever won the rainbow jersey. There are riders like Biniam Girmay making waves–he took the green jersey at the Tour de France in 2024, but the Rwandan course is most likely too hilly for him. But the Intermarché–Wanty rider is still going to give it a go.
If Le Court-Pienaar wins, it would certainly make history at a historic world championships–the first in Africa. But it would also mean adding another bar to…
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