The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA) on Tuesday announced a partnership agreement to develop talented African cyclists as part of preparations for the 2025 UCI Road World Championships to be held in Kigali, Rwanda.
Signed at the UCI headquarters in Aigle, Switzerland, on May 25, as part of Africa Day celebrations, the partnership between the two bodies aims to ensure that African countries are well represented at the UCI’s flagship event being held for the first time on the African continent in 2025.
It is envisaged that the momentum will be carried on to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games and beyond.
The partnership came as a result of talks held recently between UCI President David Lappartient, UCI Director General Amina Lanaya, the UCI World Cycling Centre (WCC) interim Director Jacques Landry, ANOCA President Mustapha Berraf and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Chief of Development of Sport in Africa, Yassine Yousfi.
After the talks, the parties agreed on a UCI Cycling Development Strategy supporting African athletes so they can be competitive by 2025, notably in the Junior and Under 23 categories.
The strategy begins this year with the identification of athletes from African countries to be chosen for a training camp at the UCI WCC Satellite in Paarl, South Africa.
Selected athletes will then be able to train at the UCI WCC in Switzerland or elsewhere in Europe where they will gain appropriate race experience over the next three years in the lead-up to the 2025 UCI Road World Championships in the Rwandan capital.
The agreement is, according to UCI President David Lappartient, part of a wider vision to strengthen the body’s development work on the continent.
“I stated in my Agenda 2022 that I wanted to take the UCI Road World Championships to Africa for the first time. I am incredibly excited to work alongside the ANOCA to ensure that African athletes will be forces to be reckoned with in Kigali in three years’ time,” Lappartient said.
“The continent is teeming with talent, and we will make sure that the whole world witnesses at the 2025 UCI World road Championships and beyond,” he added.
Some 30 athletes (male and female) will be targeted through the UCI WCC’s established physiological testing, results at international races and recommendations from UCI certified coaches and the Director of the UCI WCC Satellite in Paarl, Jean-Pierre Van Zyl.
The UCI WCC, the UCI’s education and training arm, has already launched the careers of some incredible African athletes, for example Eritreans Daniel Teklehaimanot, Merhawi Kudus, Natnael Berhane and Biniam Girmay, and of course Chris Froome, who spent his first few months in Europe at the UCI WCC after arriving from Kenya back in 2007.
Several of the UCI WCC’s female trainee athletes from Africa have also gone on to sign contracts with professional teams, and this year the WCC Team, a UCI Women’s Continental Team, has two African members: Ethiopian Selam Amha Gerefiel and South African Maude Le Roux.