2024 African Games Recap
Eritrea, Mauritius and South Africa come away as the big winners from one of the biggest sporting events in Africa
Monument season is upon us in Europe, but this week one of the biggest sporting events on the African calendar is also taking place.
The 13th African Games in Ghana has showcased some of the best African talent from a range of sports, including cycling.
The biggest African riders, such as Biniam Girmay and Ashleigh Moolman Pasio, were absent from the championships. This gave some up-and-coming racers the opportunity to shine.
Here’s a run-down of the big winners this week.
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25-year-old South African Hayley Preen has been in the form of her life in Ghana. The former Torelli rider started off the week with a solo victory in the women’s road race. She finished 23 seconds ahead of Aurelie Halbwachs of Mauritius, with Canyon//SRAM Generation’s Nigerian Ese Lovina Ukpeseraye in third.
Preen doubled up three days later with another win in the criterium. She’s a rider who showed a lot of promise in previous years while racing in Europe. Her biggest result came at the 2022 Manx International GP. 2023 didn’t yield the same level of success, not wanting to stay at the continental level Preen decided to return home to South Africa for this season, where she also races on the mountain bike. I spoke to Preen at the start of her 2023 season about her route into the sport, her ambitions and the challenges South African riders face in getting to Europe.
Preen didn’t stay on for the time-trial as she heads back to South Africa for the Absa Cape Epic this weekend.
That women’s elite time trial title was taken by Aurelie Halbwachs, who went in to the race as the favourite. The Mauritian is the reigning African continental champion, a race she won for the third time last year. Ukpeseraye was second and South Africa’s Lucy Young rounded out the podium.
Halbwachs put the cherry on top of a very successful week for Mauritius, a country which is quickly developing into one of the top African cycling nations.
Alexandre Mayer was Mauritius’ other winner. He took gold in the men’s road race, coming out on top in a small group sprint to the line. He beat young South African Dillon Geary into second and Eritrea’s Merhawi Kudus to third. Azzedine Lagab (ALG) and Dawit Yemane (ERI) were the other two in the winning group.
Mayer, who will race in the United Kingdom this year with the Saint Piran development team, has already had a strong start to the season including an aggressive ride at the Tour du Rwanda.
In addition to this, Mauritius also won medals in the men’s and women’s TTTs, placing third in both behind Eritrea and South Africa. It was an impressive performance by the Eritrean women’s squad, made up of relatively unknown riders who rarely compete outside of their home nation. In fact, for two of the four, it was their first time racing outside of Eritrea at senior level. This backs-up the anecdotal evidence of the swathes of hidden talents in the East African nation.
Nahom Zerai was another Eritrean winner. The young Q36.5 Conti climber won the men’s criterium after escaping with countryman and mentor Merhawi Kudus. French-based Mauritian Aurélien De Comarmond placed third.
The men’s TT title was taken by reigning African continental champion Charles Kagimu. Uganda’s Kagimu defeated Geary of South Africa by less than a second. Geary’s compatriot Brandon Downes finished third.
Kagimu rose to a level of fame last year by winning the African continental championships on Luke Rowe’s old TT bike. He is part of the Kenyan Riders team and trains out of the INEOS Eliud Kipchoge Cycling Academy. Kagimu took part in a team camp with the Ineos Grenadiers in January 2023.
Kagimu’s big goal for the 2024 season comes in Paris where he will compete in the Olympic Games road race, the first Ugandan cyclist ever to race in the Olympic Games.
The mixed-relays are still to take place at the time of writing.
Looking ahead to Kigali 2025
It’s hard to consider any event within African cycling right now without also looking ahead to the first World Championships to be held in Africa next year.
The African Games once again showed the wealth of talent in the continent and the passion for the sport.
Development is happening across Africa. Alongside the usual nations one would expect to find at a major championships, the likes of Mali, Sierra Leone, Djibouti and Zambia sent large cycling squads to the event. These are nations at the very early stages of development in the sport, but their participation reveals cycling’s growth across Africa.
If the large squads of the smaller nations was surprising, so was the fact that the hosts of next year’s World Championships only sent three riders to Accra.
The figures Diane Ingabire, Moise Mugisha and Vancaire Masengesho on the start-line give a picture of the struggles Rwanda has been facing in developing the sport. One can only imagine that the sparseness of their squad is down to budgetary issues. Otherwise, why would you not send as many riders as you could to what could be seen as a dress rehearsal for the championships in September 2025?
The clock is ticking for these African nations if they want to make an impact when the world comes to Kigali next year. The talent is there, it must be given the opportunity to develop.
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