the first rider from the continent to claim the green jersey<\/a> – awarded to the competitor with the most points, who is normally a sprinter – at the Tour de France last year, the 25-year-old might even struggle to finish the race.<\/p>\n“My national team need me to be there and give my support for the team, and of course I’m happy to do that. We’ll see what I am capable of doing,” Girmay said earlier this week.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know how many African riders will finish the race. It’s nice always to have a big event in your continent or in your country.<\/p>\n
“I would expect it is good for the young generation, especially for the Rwandan people because they are really motivated to grow cycling.”<\/p>\n
The best African hopes on the men’s side will come from Girmay’s compatriots.<\/p>\n
Eritreans Henok Mulubrhan, Nahom Zeray, Natnael Tesfatsion and Merhawi Kudus will work together to help one of them make a push for the top ten.<\/p>\n
The elite women, meanwhile, will take on a 164km course which sees 3,350m of climbing.<\/p>\n
Le Court, who races for the AG Insurance-Soudal team, is a strong contender after her performances so far in 2025.<\/p>\n
Alongside her on the start-line will also be the evergreen Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio from South Africa, who is looking to upgrade her continental champion jersey to the rainbow stripes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For starters, with Kigali sitting over 1500m above sea level, riders will have to be prepared to tackle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-145695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}