JUST THE BEGINNING
Adrien Niyonshuti with the road frame he first used for racing. After a stint at a UCI training camp in South Africa, Niyonshuti was offered a pro contract with the UCI Continental team MTN-Energade.

Rwandan rider garners interest at home and abroad

Adrien Niyonshuti didn't win the Tour of Ireland. He didn't grab a KOM jersey, take a sprint point, or hold a spontaneous Twitter rally that drew 1,000 riders to Dublin. He didn't even finish. But Niyonshuti, a 22-year-old climber who became the first rider from Rwanda to start a European pro road event, was perhaps the most compelling human story in the three-day, late-August race.

I'd met Niyonshuti a couple of summers ago, on a cross-Rwanda mountain bike tour with Tom Ritchey and Jock Boyer, a pair of American cycling legends who had teamed up to launch, among other endeavors, a nascent professional team in the hilly African country. Adrien was a tall, quiet young man who was eager to become his nation's best rider and compete with the best in the world. Like almost everyone in Rwanda, he'd experienced personal horrors in the 1994 genocide – six of his brothers had been killed.

Not long before I left Rwanda, I watched Niyonshuti take an easy sprint victory in a small road race from the Rwandan capital of Kigali to the city of Butare. I thought of that humble, dusty day when I heard about him at the Tour of Ireland, lining up against the likes of Mark Cavendish and Lance Armstrong amid thousands of fans and those slick, shiny tour buses.

"Adrien was a bit disappointed in his performance but when he looked at it in proper perspective, it gave him inspiration to achieve more," Boyer told me a few weeks later. "He'd never ridden 200km, let alone race that distance with the top professionals in the world. His experience there had no comparison to anything else. He learned more in three days there than the whole year."

Boyer expects Niyonshuti, who now rides for South Africa's MTN team, to race again in Europe, if given the chance. Meanwhile, Rwanda is electrified over his ride with pro cycling's elite, he said. "Rwanda has been very, very excited about his success," he said.

This year's Tour of Rwanda will be an international UCI event, Boyer said, "and [Adrien] just gives them more impetus to make the event even more professional."