Welcome to the first edition of Global Peloton!
There’s an undiscovered world out there.
Pro cycling is entrenched in its traditional heartlands. That’s not surprising, really. Cycling is a sport with a rich history, particularly in Western Europe. The historic significance of the Tour de France, Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Paris Roubaix adds to their prestige and intrigue.
Naturally, most cycling fans also come from these countries of heritage, as well as a large proportion of financial investment in the sport.
These elements make cycling western-centric. Cycling media focusses on the sport’s French, Belgian and British stars. The men’s World Tour only contains six out of thirty-five events outside of Europe in 2023 - the women’s just five out of thirty.
The questions is, cycling fan, is this right?
Sure, I understand the numbers. Cycling is in a bit of a mess right now and the sport can only do what it can afford.
Maybe the future needs to be different, maybe the future needs to be more global and diverse.
Cycling should not just be a European or western sport. It has fans worldwide. We’re going to see this in evidence next week with the Tour du Rwanda. The images of this race are always so striking, with ten-deep crowds lining the Mur de Kigali. Cycling is a sport rapidly growing in popularity across Africa. Biniam Girmay is the tip of the iceberg, folks.
In Asia the sport is steadily expanding too in multiple disciplines. Also in surprising places like the Caribbean.
What’s more, there is a sea of talented and passionate young bike riders in these countries waiting for the opportunity to show what they can do. Unfortunately, they don’t have the same opportunities as kids from Belgium. I believe that this is wrong and the system which drives this inequality needs to change.
My aim is to bring you these stories of cycling around the globe and to highlight riders from those nations who are breaking through on the world stage.
This will come in the form of a weekly round-up and some additional articles.
Everything is free for now, but that won’t be forever. In the future, I will likely make the additional content for paid subscribers only.
If you do want to support me, you can add a paid subscription if you want to.
Below this waffly bit is a look back at the African Continental Championships which happened last week.
Next week I’ll be back to look at the Tour du Rwanda.
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Dan
African Continental Championships
Last week the ever-fascinating African Continental Championships were held in Accra, Ghana.
Every year, this is a great event for discovering the next generation of talent in Africa and this edition was no different.
These championships were particularly significant as nations were also chasing automatic qualification for the 2023 Worlds and 2024 Olympic Games.
Unfortunately, the event was marred by poor organisation. Riders were left sitting on plastic chairs in the dirt waiting for their results which took an age to come and when they did, had multiple errors. It seemed to be run on a shoe-string despite funding from the UCI through their Solidarity Programme. I have asked questions about this to the UCI, CAC and others but as yet have had no response.
When you think about African cycling, the two nations who immediately stand out as being particularly strong are Eritrea and South Africa, particularly the latter when it comes to the women. Unfortunately all four of Eritrea’s male World Tour riders skipped the event and South Africa didn’t attend at all due to a clash with their Nationals.
This allowed Algeria and Mauritius to step forward as the dominant forces across the whole week. Algeria came away with eight gold medals in all categories. As a nation they have invested a lot of resources into their junior programmes for men and women and they’re beginning to see the rewards.
Mauritius took wins in the Women’s TTT, Mixed TTT and Women’s TT through Aurelie Halbwachs. This small nation consistently punches above their weight.
There was a somewhat surprising result in the Men’s TT as former Bike Aid and ProTouch rider, Charles Kagimu, took the win for Uganda. Charles has recently linked up with the Ineos academy in Kenya and benefitted from riding Luke Rowe’s 2022 TT bike and working with the World Tour team on a camp in January.
Charles is looking for a team for 2023 after Protouch folded. Hopefully he can find one as he clearly has great legs right now.
Kagimu beat Moise Mugisha (Rwa) into second and Henok Mulubrhan (Eri) of Green Project-Bardiani CSF-Faiazané was third.
There was an even bigger surprise in the women’s Road Race as Nigeria’s Ese Lovina Ukpeseraye took the win. Ukpeseraye is usually found on the track as a sprinter. Perhaps then the flat hotdog style course suited her.
A group were allowed to get away with the big nations represented but with some of their weaker riders. They were never seen again by the favourites like Vera Looser (Nam) and Kim le Court (Mau).
Awa Bamogo (Bur) and Llucie De Marigny-Lagesse (Mau) finished second and third.
This means that Nigeria and Burkina Faso have qualified a spot in the Worlds and Olympics - something which is quite significant in these nations where cycling is only just emerging, especially for women.
The men’s race followed a much more expected pattern with a big-ish group coming to the line. Henok Mulubrhan repeated his win from 2022 in exactly the same fashion with a powerful sprint.
Yacine Hamza (Alg) and Achraf Ed-Doghmy (Mor) sprinted to second and third.
Through the course of the championships, there were a number of new talents who emerged as stars of the future. I wrote a Twitter thread about this a few days ago.
Let me know who stood out for you at the African Continental Championships.