Written by:
Matt Majendie | The National
Adrien Niyonshuti celebrates winning the Tour of Rwanda in September last year. Despite dreaming of one day competing in the Tour de France, Niyonshuti still loves competing on his home Tour. Courtesy of Sarah Pedersen
Adrien Niyonshuti is no stranger to tragedy.
In 1994, Niyonshuti lost six brothers to the Rwandan genocide that left a million of his countrymen dead. Last year his father died and also one of his closest friends and protégé, a 17-year-old cyclist called Godfrey Gahemba, after being struck by a car in training.
But despite his devastating list of personal tragedies, Niyonshuti has an amazingly powerful outlook on life.
The 21-year-old is currently the top-ranked cyclist in Rwanda. He recently signed a professional contract with a South African team and has dreams of riding at the London Olympics and, at some point in the future, the Tour de France.
Should he achieve either target, which his coach, former American pro Jock Boyer believes are “achievable”, it will round off a remarkable turnaround for Niyonshuti.
The soft-spoken Niyonshuti prefers not to dwell on his horrific past, instead focusing on his cycling ambitions. He says: “There are lots of days when I think of my brothers and my cousin Godfrey, and those days are not good days. I feel sad that I do not have as much of my family around me as I would like and that they had to die.
“But many families in Rwanda have gone through similar things but to be too sad for too long is not good for cycling or for life. If you dwell on the bad in the past, you cannot cycle well so I try to focus on what lies ahead of me. But I feel I’m hopefully doing my family proud, particularly my mother.
Read More...
“I try to send as much money as I can to my mother, more and more and more, and I think she’s happy for that and for me.”
Niyonshuti was given his first bike by his uncle Emmanuel and immediately fell in love with it while his brothers preferred football. He is now the over-riding success story of Project Rwanda, which was set up by former American rider Tom Ritchey with the aim of boosting economic development in the country through bike iniatives.
Ritchey visited the country in 2005 and became obsessed with trying to help a country still trying to piece itself together more than a decade after the genocide.
The biggest aspect of that is Team Rwanda, a dozen cyclists who have been brought together in a bid to get a professional team at the Tour de France and also riders into the next Olympics in London.
At the heart of Team Rwanda is Boyer, a former rival of Ritchey’s, who he tempted into the project in 2006. Boyer has lived in the country ever since and plans to spend at least another five years before his dreams are fully realised.
When Boyer first arrived in Rwanda, he knew little about the country and the genocide. “I couldn’t have even told you where it was on a map. I’d heard about the genocide but I must confess I barely knew a thing about it,” he says.
“But I got to know a lot about it. I’ve only read one book on the subject but a lot of the riders in the team are survivors of it. There’s Adrien who lost six brothers in the genocide, another who lost two members of his family. In fact, they’ve all been affected by the genocide.
“And for me that made it too painful to even go to the memorial services. I finally went to one last year and it was amazingly powerful and moving.
“It’s amazing that these people have just got on with their lives. Their spirit is a lesson to all of us. It’s inspirational to see these riders do what they do on bikes bearing in mind their past.”
Most of Boyer’s talent-spotting has been successful – although not all of it, he admits – but he believes the east African country is the perfect stomping ground to unearth talent.
“This country is known as the land of a thousand hills,” he said. “It’s perfect cycling territory. Everywhere’s up and down. Sure, it might not have the high climbs of Europe but this is a perfect place to learn to ride and at altitude.”
Boyer tells of one time when the team went out on a training ride and passed a giant of a man cycling on one of the country’s ordinary bikes.
Laden with coffee bags, he was unsurprisingly passed by the team but Boyer was astonished to see the guy, a man named Leonard, catch up. “Imagine getting someone like that on a bike,” he says.
“He’s got three wives and three families and he’s 31 years of age. He’s an amazing man but barely speaks a word of English or French [the team’s language of choice].”
In fact, every rider has a rags to potential riches story. “You see them living in what are just mud huts and they’re just appreciative of what they’ve got, whatever it is,” adds Boyer.
“And understandably the riders are treated like heroes in Rwanda. Everyone knows about them and everyone looks up to them. It’s an incredible story really.”
One of the plethora of stumbling blocks for these riders to make it to the top of the sport is their poor diet. A recent nutritional survey of their food intake suggested that over 80 per cent of their diet was made of carbohydrates.
Boyer explains: “Basically everything you’d want them to have is missing from their diet. That’s why we want to get them together at a team base. I’d love to have them with me the whole time but there’s just not the space although I try to have them a few days a week.”
Funding, all of which is private, is an issue as well. The team rely on donations to keep afloat with their projects. Yet Boyer has ambitious aims for a centre for east African riding talent.
“We’ve seen how good the Ethiopians and Kenyans are at long-distance running for example,” he points out. “I’d dearly love to dip into that gene pool. It would be amazing and it would be realistic to one day dream of an all-African team at the Tour de France.”
That is currently a tad ambitious and some way off, although Boyer insists it will happen. The Tour of Rwanda is currently the biggest draw for the team. This year – the sixth running of it – it is on the official international calendar and up to half-a-dozen professional European teams are expected to take part.
And for riders like Niyonshuti, the defending champion, that is just the sort of exposure he needs. “I don’t often get the chance to come home as the chances are not so good for a cyclist but I will be proud to ride for my country and win the Tour of Rwanda against famous riders,” he says.
“I don’t know many cyclists as I don’t have any internet so I can’t find out information about who people are. All I know is that I’ve been given a chance in South Africa and I love to be riding my bike whenever I can.”
But the team’s knowledge base is widening. They have met and received tips from five-time Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault and also Laurent Fignon, another former Tour winner.
And Niyonshuti is relishing the prospect of riding alongside the likes Lance Armstrong. “To ride at the Tour de France or Olympics would be a dream but I am just happy with the gift of life and cycling,” he said. “For now I can only dream but in a few years time hopefully that will be different.”
Only time will tell.
