The Rwandan capital Kigali will from Sunday host some of the biggest names in cycling, including the men’s and women’s Tour de France winners, for the first staging in Africa of the UCI road world championships.
The championships date back to 1921 when the Danish capital Copenhagen staged the first edition with only one race – a men’s road event for amateurs.
Just over a century on, six road races, six individual time trials, and a mixed relay team time trial will play out over the streets and hills around Kigali until 28 September.
It will be the first year with a standalone women's under-23 race. In previous editions, the under-23 winner was simply the highest-placed rider under 23 in the women's elite race.
"Well, it's about time it was held in Africa," said Kimberly Coats, CEO of the US-based Team Africa Rising, a non-profit organisation that works to help the development of African cyclists.
"We always think of cycling as Eurocentric so to have it on the African continent is an acknowledgement of the work that we've done, and the work that other partners of ours have done since the early 2000s on the continent developing cyclists."
Supremos at the Union Cycliste International (UCI), the world sport's governing body, awarded the 2025 world championships to Rwanda in September 2021.
Since the decision, Rwanda's role in the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has come under increasing scrutiny.
Human rights groups as well as the United Nations say they have evidence that Rwanda is actively bolstering forces of the M23 group in its sweep through Goma and Bukavu in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.
Authorities in Kigali deny providing arms and troops to M23 rebels. They say Rwandan forces are acting in self-defence against the Congolese army and militias hostile to Rwandans, especially Tutsi.
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame was one of the strongest advocates for the establishment in 2021 of the Basketball Africa League and, as a fan of the English Premier League club Arsenal, has cleared sponsorship deals between the Rwanda Development Board and Arsenal as well as the Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain.
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Rwanda under scrutiny
Critics say such promotion is sportswashing – using sporting events to gloss over official clampdowns on political opponents and human rights abuses.
"It is very much part of Kagame's toolkit," said Michela Wrong, author of several books on Africa including Rwanda Assassins sans frontierès. "He does sportswashing superbly well.
"And it's because it works in his favour, he's also genuinely an Arsenal fan, so he likes to go and watch the matches himself.
"Rwanda is managing to get its message out to a very particular audience. It's a young audience. It's a trendy audience. It's an audience that possibly isn't that well informed about the niceties of African politics over the last 30 years and one that can't really be bothered to read up on that sort of detail.
"So it's a way of sort of going over the heads of people like me and journalists. Rwanda goes over our heads and reaches a young audience that really doesn't want to engage with those issues. So I think it's a very effective way of marketing a certain kind of message.
"This is sportswashing taken to quite a very high level, a level that I don't think you can see anywhere else in Africa."
Despite such qualms in the prelude to the championships, UCI chief David Lappartient said the host city would not be changed.
‘It’s not as simple as you sometimes read," Lappartient said in an interview with Cyclist magazine. "We are always very careful about the way that we can be used, but in Rwanda you can really feel the support for President Kagame. He brings people back together.
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'Wonderful races, wonderful images'
"It’s a bit of blue sky on a grey day," added the 52-year-old Frenchman. "We have never been to Africa. We knew there would be challenges but we will have wonderful races, wonderful images worldwide."
Pictures of the punctures, pursed lips and the preening will pump out from Sunday morning with the elite women's individual time trial (ITT) over 31.2km between the BK Arena in Kigali and the Kigali Convention Centre.
With 2024 women's ITT champion Grace Brown having retired, the American Chloe Dygert, a two-time world champion in the discipline, is favourite to prevail.
In the men's ITT, which takes place just afterwards, the four-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar will test his speed over 40.6km against the likes of the defending champion Remco Evenepoel.
"I want to win as many different jerseys as possible and I have done everything I could possibly have done," Evenepoel said.
The 25-year-old Belgian added: "I've trained well, feel well, have good legs and a good vibe. I'm ready."
On Monday, the men's and women's under-23 ITTs will be staged and on Tuesday, the ITTs for the men's and women's juniors (under 18s) will be held.
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Mixed relay time
On Wednesday, the mixed relay team time trial will go over a 41.8km course starting and finishing at the Kigali Convention Centre.
"The courses make for exciting and open challenges that will require both masterful solitary outputs and climbing abilities," said a UCI spokesperson.
The road races begin on Thursday morning with the women's under-23 and on Friday, the men's juniors and under-23s will fight over 119.3km and 164.6km courses respectively.
The women's juniors will start the penultimate day of competition before the elite women's race on Saturday afternoon in which the French Tour de France champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot will be among the favourites along with a Dutch team led by Demi Vollering.
The 98th UCI road world championships culminate with the 267.5km elite men's road race in which riders will attempt to dethrone Pogacar.
They will start with nine laps of a 15km city circuit before embarking on a middle section with three climbs, one of which takes the riders to an elevation of 1,771 metres on Mount Kigali.
Uros Murn, one of the Slovenia coaches, told Reuters news agency: "This year will be harder than last year, because everyone expects us to defend the jersey."
On a parochial note, Coats said she did not expect any of the African riders to be on the podiums.
"Let's be honest, the chances of medalling are very slim," she added. "For example, Biniam Girmay is there but it's not his race. There's too much climbing in the road race. It's not designed for a sprinter like Biniam.
"I'm just hoping that the African riders finish. I'm hoping that there's some breakout moments that show the rest of the world that African cyclists are legitimate and that they deserve the investment in development.
"It's not a great course for a lot of the African riders but it's going to be exciting."
