The Incredible Tour of Rwanda | The paper

If the ranking of the most exciting races could be drawn up by the runners (a bit as if it were the actors who established the most fascinating theaters or the sailors who indicated the safest ports), then the Milan-San Remo (spring!) would beat the Giro di Lombardy (autumn…), the Tour of Flanders (the people!) would prevail over Paris-Roubaix (the cobblestones…), the Strade Bianche (the dirt road!) would dominate over Liège-Bastogne-Liege (exhaustion …). And the Tour of Rwanda it would top the list of stage races.

What is taking place in these days (from 19 to 26 February, eight stages for 1,129.9 kilometers with departure and arrival in the capital Kigali, 93 riders from 20 teams at the start) is the fifteenth official edition of the African tour, but the twenty-sixth unofficial, including those first times in which the place of departure of the stages was known but not always the place of arrival (an organizational approximation that could be transformed into an ingenious revolution) or in which the number of riders arriving at the last stage was higher than the number of riders who started the first stage (some stopped by customs, some by war, some by road accidents or mechanical problems).

The turning point was due to Jock Boyer, the first American to race the Tour de France (in 1981), collecting 49 victories as a professional and participating in nine World Championships (and Goodwood, in 1982, was the last to surrender to the “shotgun” of Beppe Saronni). Returning from problems and judicial convictions, Boyer began to live again (and redeem himself) in Rwanda: he recruited future riders from among the coffee boys, discovered and launched Adrien Niyonshuti even at the Olympic level, recreated the Tour du Rwanda and launched it into international cycling, invented and had a world-leading cycling center built (and at the altitude of Musanze, at an altitude of 1850). Ten years that changed the world of cycling, and quite a bit also that of a country shocked – forever – by the 1994 genocide, one million dead in one hundred days, Hutu and Tutsi massacring each other with the accomplice global silence.

This year the number 1 bib was delivered to Chris Froome, four victories in the Tour de France, two in the Vuelta of Spain and one in the Giro d’Italia, a white Kenyan, a naturalized Englishman, a point of reference (despite his 37 years) in world cycling. And Froome gave convincing words of appreciation and satisfaction for a movement that 15 years ago seemed only folklore and now appears as the new horizon. So much so that the 2025 cycling world championships will be held right here, in Rwanda. And already here, in Rwanda, amateur cyclists and cyclists come to pedal (and spend money). The Tour du Rwanda is increasingly the showcase of an international sports market.

After Froome, the list of starters does not continue with other such strong and well-known names. There are national teams, such as Rwanda but also Great Britain, South Africa and Eritrea. There are teams from the WorldTour, i.e. from the Champions Cup, such as EF Education and Israel (from Froome), Soudal-Quick Step (albeit in a youth version) and TotalEnergies. And there are also the Italians, distributed between the Green Project Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè (Bruno Reverberi’s historic formation) and Q36.5 (where Vincenzo Nibali acts as ambassador and consultant): six riders looking for adventures and results, experiences and, yes, life. And everyone is enthusiastic about it. Starting with David Gabburo, 30 years old on April 1st, from Bovolone in Verona, in his sixth year of professionalism, who wanted to return to Rwanda because, in his very personal ranking, “nowhere in the world have I ever seen so many people, so much warmth and so much color , along the roads”. And to explain the crowds not only at the start or finish line, but along the entire route, he tells us about when he pees. “By regulation you have to stop in a secluded place, otherwise you can be stung with a fine for disrespectful or even obscene acts in a public place. In Italy, outside the inhabited centers. But here it is impossible. There are no 10 meters without spectators, not even in the open countryside. Flocks of children run from the hills, barefoot, at breakneck speed, to watch us runners pass and then they stay there on the road to play or to find a trophy – a water bottle, a can, half a sandwich – to take home triumphantly , or at school, or in the fields where they work the land or graze the animals”. In the end Gabburo decided to do so: he enters the savannah and finally frees himself there.

People like the Tour du Rwanda because it combines the nostalgia of the origins of cycling with the spectacle of cycling today. Gabburo recounts, amused, of “nights spent not in large hotels but in religious convents; beds wrapped in mosquito nets; perfect wifi connections and whatsapp communications; wake up at 5.45 because the stages start at 8 and finish – at the latest – at 13, later it’s too hot; non-existent supplies, you can only count on your own flagships; dinners based on white rice, boiled chicken and cooked vegetables, eating something else risks dysentery; Rwandan chauffeurs procured by the organizers, cheerful at the wheel, eternal at the distributors; unpredictable racing strategies, with sudden and preposterous attacks as if there were no tomorrow, I won’t say tomorrow, but not even around the corner; strong but unknown and hardly recognizable African runners, they could be different every day and I certainly wouldn’t be able to notice it; and a hard, tough run, all up and down”.

Yes: the country of a thousand hills. Rwanda is an intricate, hunched over, endless natural velodrome.