November 15, 2012 – The UCI Tour of Rwanda starts this Sunday, November 18. Eight African nations, three European teams, two Rwandan squads, one American and one Canadian team are competing. Garneau-Québecor is sending myself and four other riders. I’m on my Vancouver-London flight right now; the others-Tim Abercrombie, Bruno Langlois, Remi Pelletier and Jean-Francois Racine-and I will meet up in Kigali, the capital and centre of Rwanda (which I discovered once I’d found Rwanda on Google Maps).
The following is everything else I know about Rwanda:
– it’s near the equator,
– is at 1,500 metres,
– average temperatures are in the mid-20s,
– the country is rebuilding after 1 million of its people killed each other in the 1994 genocide,
– and as of 2009 has a UCI 2.2, 8-day, 9-stage bike race.
The following is everything I know about the Tour of Rwanda:
– stages are about 150km long,
– total elevation gain throughout the race is 12,407 metres.
Rwanda’s official tourism slogan is “The land of a Thousand Hills.” A spreadsheet of the race says Stage 4 climbs 3,829m. The flattest stage, Stage 6, rises 800m. For comparison, Mont-Mégantic in Quebec’s Tour de Beauce climbs 500m; Mt. Seymour in Vancouver climbs 921m.
Segment hunting on Strava shows Rwanda has dozens of KOMs, some only a hundred metres long or high, others up to 29km and peaking at 2,400m high. Most of the segments list only three riders: I assume they’re racers from previous tours. Of the few photos I’ve seen of the stage finishers, it’s usually only a dozen riders coming in together. Looks more like selection than breakaways.
Aside from Philip Gourevitch’s Letter from Rwanda article HERE in the New Yorker about Team Rwanda and the Tour, the official (sparse and translated) race site HERE, a few cellphone YouTube videos, and a total of two photosets on Flickr, there are little to no details or race reports, firsthand or otherwise.
Over the next two weeks we’ll try to fill in some of the internet’s gaps with information, photos, race reports and GPS tracks of the Tour of Rwanda. In particular I want to answer the following questions:
– How safe is Rwanda for tourists and cyclists?
– How fast are these African teams?
– Are there really 1,000 hills?