Editor,

Refer to the article, "We can turn cycling into Rwanda's main sport” (The New Times, June 21).

Cycling at the highest professional levels is one of the highest doped sports, with a recent report by the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) estimating anywhere between 20 to 90 per cent of the pelotons in many cycling tournaments being doped.

The CIRC also reports many middle-aged businessmen on EPO or other designer or experimental drugs are winning amateur races. The sport's most prestigious race, Le Tour de France, has become so notorious for its widespread drug use by many of its "winners" (including the seven-time "champion" American Lance Armstrong), and even entire teams, that spectators have rebranded it "Le Tour de Dope"!

Other jokes have riders boasting that, "My chemist is far better than yours!"

Why should government sink our hard-earned resources into this cesspool? Let's go about revamping our football and athletics, starting with the grassroots, instead.

Meantime, let's accept that as our sporting situation is currently, we have more hope than any real possibility of winning anything serious. But a more systematic programme to revamp and grow our football and athletics would bear fruit in about ten years.

Mwene Kalinda

**************************I agree with the article. Yes, football has a huge fan base and it would be "expected" that it is the sport to support. On the other hand, Rwandan cyclists have come a long way in such a short time to achieve the impossible.

I am blown away every time I drive up through Shyorongi and I see these local young men cycle up and down those hills like they were just another small hill to climb and descend. The talent is extraordinary and we need to harness it.

The beautiful hills of Rwanda are a perfect location to start creating our own cycling tournaments, and turn them into a national sporting event that the whole country/region can get involved in (which also engages local tourism) and hence a win-win opportunity.

We could certainly take the game away from the previously famous Tour de France and show them how it’s done—minus the dope!

Nshuti

***************************Team Rwanda, in response to Mwene Kalinda's comment, is showing the international community that it can be successful without doping, without performance enhancing drugs. Our riders race clean and are taught from the beginning that no "cheating" albeit via drugs, hanging onto cars, or not racing with complete integrity.

Rwandan cyclists represent Rwanda and take being ambassadors for their country very seriously. They want the world to know the good that is Rwanda.

Kimberly Moszyk Coats, Director of Marketing/ Logistics, Team Rwanda