<\/p>\n
But a change might be coming. At least that’s what Froome hopes the 2025 World Championships in Kigali, Rwanda – first-ever on African soil, could achieve in the long run. With secondary projects attached to this event, such as openning of the WCC satellite in Rwanda, maybe there could be a lasting outreach of the World Championships, rather than for it to be “just an exotic experience”.<\/p>\n
“I really hope the World Championships this year will be a catalyst for more development from African cycling in the future,” said Froome. “I think it’s a pivotal moment in the sport. Having the world championships in Africa, I think it’s going to really turn a lot of heads, and I’m hoping we’ll see a lot more investment in African cycling.”<\/p>\n
Much was said about the huge natural potential of athletes from Africa, with Kenya and Ethiopia dominating the distance running for decades. But in cycling, only a select few have been able to build a successful professional career, and only Biniam Girmay was really able to reach the absolute top.<\/p>\n
“I think Africa has got so much to offer in terms of talent, maybe even more talent than we’ve seen in Europe,” Froome thinks. “You only need to look at the marathon runners to understand, as an endurance sport, Africa really has a massive, massive potential, which has largely remained untapped until now.”<\/p>\n
The main obstacle however seems the accessibility and perception of the sport of cycling as a whole by public.<\/p>\n
“Cycling is still very much a sport that has some very difficult barriers of entry,” he said. “Obviously, it’s very expensive to buy a bike and all the equipment. There are not so many events for people to take part in. There’s more than when I was growing up, but it still hasn’t taken off the way I’d like to see it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" But a change might be coming. At least that’s what Froome hopes the 2025 World Championships in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-4443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}