The Tour of Rwanda

We’ve had plenty of courtroom reports from Alberto Contador and Jeannie Longo. Riccardo Ricco got a criminal record and a prison sentence. Operation Puerto is being reheated too. All in one week and it’s not yet Friday.

Don’t forget the tale of a breakaway league where some of the big teams in the sport are thinking of setting up on a new version of pro cycling. But it goes without saying the sport is about a lot more than lawyers and bankers. There’s no better example than the Tour of Rwanda.

The African country is recovering from a civil war than saw an estimated 800,000 people slaughtered and by some accounts, the place is doing well all things considered, the GDP per capita has tripled since the genocide, albeit from a small base. It’s a hilly country full of coffee plantations where the roads swing from 1,000 metres above sea level up to heights well beyond 2,000 metres.

One star of the race is Adrien Niyonshuti. A Rwandan, he is a pro with the South African UCI Continental team MTN. Whilst the public has been with him, perhaps luck has not. Cyclingnews.com reports “a seriously scraped knee and a dislocated shoulder which deprived of wearing the polka-dot jersey on the podium, all due to a crash the day before when he came back to his hotel“. A dislocated shoulder?

French daily L’Equipe has dispatched a journalist to cover the race. Philippe Le Gars is not one of the usual cycling staff, instead he writing about the race from other perspectives and his daily chronique is a must read for me at the moment (remember translation engines do a pretty good job these days). His latest despatch features Tanzania’s Richard Laizer who normally works as a bicycle courier in Arusha where each July he likes to tune into the Tour de France in between delivering messages so that can can watch his hero Mark Cavendish in action. Le Gars also reports how riders turned up for this UCI 2.2 race with their bikes held together by tape, although they are decked in Google jerseys thanks to Hincapie Sports.

Strade rosse

Yesterday we heard about the Ethiopian cycling team. The country is a neighbour of Eritrea which has a flourishing cycling culture, a legacy of Italian colonial rule but which today means Daniel Teklahaimanot will ride in the Pro Tour in 2012, assuming Greenedge makes it. In fact Ethiopia are at war with Eritrea and the cycling team has being funded to help the rivalry. But things are more inspiring on the bike of course. Ethiopia’s Weldemikael Weyo made the winning breakaway and was only beaten after being outfoxed by a more experienced Team Type 1 rider, the American Kiel Reijnen. Weyo lacked what is known as science de la course or tactics but with these abilities, hopefully there is more to come.

Summary
This race is more than a sporting competition or a competitive ride. The tales of riders travelling by bus for days just to take part are inspiring, the home-made repairs and often unsurfaced roads are reminiscent of how sport could have been a century ago.

Above all this race is a useful reminder that cycling is a struggle but in the positive sense. Battles are fought on the road and not in the courtroom.

The race has a website at http://en.tourofrwanda.com