Rwanda has moved to fifth position in the men’s elite ranking on the UCI Africa Tour following the new rankings released by the International Cycling Union yesterday.
Rwanda has moved to fifth position in the men’s elite ranking on the UCI Africa Tour following the new rankings released by the International Cycling Union yesterday.
Ranked sixth last month, Rwanda returned to fifth position following their impressive performance at the All Africa Games in Congo Brazzaville last month where Janvier Hadi won the men’s road race and Rwanda scooped bronze in the men’s elite team time trial as well as winning the ‘best team’ accolade at the Tour de Côte d’Ivoire.
"We are still a strong country of cycling and we are in the top five countries in Africa,” said Aimable Bayingana, Rwanda Cycling Federation president.
Algeria is the highest ranked team with 1, 154 points while Morocco (1140 points), South Africa (871.88 points) and Eritrea (717.88 points) are ranked second, third and fourth respectively. Rwanda has 413.99 points ahead of Tunisia (370 points) and Cameroon (221 points) who are sixth and seventh in that order.
Hadi, who has amassed 134.33 points this year, is ranked 11th on the African continent following his gold medal in the men’s road race and bronze in the men’s team time trial at the All Africa Games last month and finishing second at the Tour de Côte d’Ivoire earlier this month. He was second at stage 2 from Bouake to Sakassou in Ivory Coast.
He also won the Grand Prix de la Ville d’Oran, won stage 4 and won the king of the mountains category at the Tour d’Annaba in Algeria at the Grand Tour of Algeria in March.
He also finished second at stage 1 of the Tour International d’Oranie, was third at stage 1 of the Tour International of Blida in Algeria and was third at the prologue stage of the Tour of Egypt in January.
Bayingana, who has been at the helm of FERWACY since 2008, revealed that being in the top five in Africa was his goal and now that it has been achieved, the new target is to be in the top three by 2017.
Bayingana said, "We will achieve it by organizing races on the UCI calendar not only the Tour of Rwanda. We also want to continue participating in races on the UCI Africa Tour calendar.”
According to him, FERWACY is going to advocate for some of the Rwanda Cycling Cup races to be included on the UCI Africa Tour calendar.
The recently concluded competition had 11 events that commenced in April and ended on Sunday, providing a platform for young riders and national team cyclists to get used to regular competition on the local scene.