Former national cycling team captain, Adrien Niyonshuti, says cycling has played a significant role in helping him deal with the wounds of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis in which over a million innocent people lost their lives. The Skol Adrien Cycling Academy (SACA) coach lost most of his family members during the Genocide against Tutsi in 1994 when he was just seven years old. As he grew up, initially encouraged by his uncle Emmanuel Turatsinze, who lent him an old steel bike, Niyonshuti used cycling as an escape from the realities of his past. The then 16-year-old Niyonshuti was elated but little did he know that this combination of small metallic cylinders would change his life and destiny. At the end of the genocide, my uncle used to tell me “since you are my sister’s child, I will try to help you, I was young, the bicycle was some form of game for me, never did I think it would be a career that would take me places”. Niyonshuti used to accompany his uncle on his way to find food for the cows and both of them rode bicycles and that was where he realized he had the agility to ride a bicycle for long journeys and at a fast pace. “There were a lot of traumatic experiences I and many other people in Rwanda had gone through during and after the Genocide. I remember I was mostly lonely and moody in school. This affected my studies until one day, a visiting doctor advised me to engage in any sport of my choice.” That is when Niyonshuti immersed himself in cycling and joined a local cycling club in Nyanza. He competed in several local competitions that propelled him to the national team where he got his first taste of the Tour du Rwanda in 2013. Niyonshuti, who won the Tour du Rwanda in 2008, is the first and only Rwandan cyclist to represent the country at the Olympic Games more than once [London 2012 and Rio 2016] and was the first to play the sport as a professional when she joined MTN Qhubeka of South Africa in 2009.
