November 19, 2012 (Nyagatare, Rwanda) – Garneau-Québecor lost its yellow jersey today on the 150km Stage 1 from Kigali to Nyagatare, at the Tour of Rwanda. Shaun Ward of National Team South Africa is now in yellow as well as the Best Climber and Best African jerseys. His team also jumps ahead of Garneau-Québecor as best for the stage.

Kudus Merhawi of Eritrea won the stage as well as the best young rider jersey. Rwandan star Adrien Niyonshuti takes home the jersey for best from his country again, while Ward’s teammate, Dylan Girdlestone, gets the Best Combative jersey.

As for how the race shook out, like the Prologue it started at Kigali stadium at 8am but in  sunshine – our first day without rain since arriving last week. Also on the start line was our man Tim Abercrombie’s breakfast: he hasn’t been able to keep food down since yesterday, having rejected his dinner twice during the night. But it’s too late to take a ciprofloxacin now, so we dodge the muesli puddle and racing begins.

The 15-minute neutral rollout takes our 66-man peloton and its caravan of police escorts, motos, UCI officials and rented Toyota team cars east from the capital into the cultivated and rolling countryside. As expected a break goes in the first 10km, comprised-I believe-of some Eritrean and Team Rwanda riders. I believe because it goes just as our man Jean-François Racine punctures. Such a small peloton means a small caravan: pacing each other back up to and through the fewer than a dozen cars is more taxing and draft-less than expected.

By the time we get back the break is well away without any Garneau Quebecor riders in it.

The next 100k are rolling and fast on the surprisingly good tarmac (built by the Chinese I’m told). There’s the usual assortment of counters, fleeting alliances and failed bridge attempts, including a number by our own yellow and prologue-winning jersey riders, Rémi Pelletier-Roy and Bruno Langlois, respectively. But it’s more of a testing-the-waters for us to see what the other teams have brought to Rwanda-and what the Rwandese themselves have. The break does come back, but unfortunately not before a three-man counter had already gone through them.

By now the bunch is truly dicking around and no one will pull (including our team) and our average speed goes from the mid-50s to the at-best 30s. Livening up the charade, however, are the crowds. Every village-and we pass one every 10k-is like a Gastown Grandprix finishing stretch from back home: the crowds are just pounding the barriers (in this case buses and signposts) screaming at us.

In towns like Nyagasambu, Rwamagaana, Kayonza and, later, the finishing town of Nyagatare, spectators number over a thousand and our escorts can’t always keep two lanes open. They do, however, perform a harrowing yet effective job of playing chicken with any traffic that gets in its way, pushing them well off the road or, as the Tour’s official live Twitter [link: https://twitter.com/TourofRwanda ] puts so forebodingly: “Thanks to the national police, lots of private cars want to follow the Tour and seem to disturb..they are delt [sic] with.”

By the time we crest 100k the break has over seven minutes on us. With Rémi sitting in to try and conserve for a finishing defence, and Abercrombie last seen over an hour ago and likely in a hospitalized world of bonk, Bruno starts up the chase with Jean-Françcois, myself and some off-and-on Team Rwanda riders.

We take pull after pull and the moto board shows 5:00, then soon after 1:35. By the time Racine and I get popped on the final climb the gap is only 45 seconds. Langlois and Pelletier-Roy nearly seal the deal on their own, but one attacker slips away and Pelletier-Roy takes 5th on the stage.

We lost the yellow and team GC today, and nearly Abercrombie, too. We’re sitting in giant drainage ditch surrounded by packs of local kids, trying to find some shade and modesty as we change out of our shorts, but there’s still no word on him. There’s no broom wagon either: once you’re dropped, as I can attest, you’re on your own. It’s thirty minutes later, as we’re well into the rice and overcooked pasta provided by the organizers in Nyagatare, that he crawls in. Abercrombie somehow finishes over half the race alone, without water.

Four hours later he’s in bed with a bottle of antibiotics on the table and still no food in him. But water is staying down and the mother-of-all-bonks is hopefully over, as we’ve got to focus on yellow and a double day tomorrow with Stage 3 in the morning and Stage 4 later in the evening.

Results

1. Kudus Merhawi (UCI Continental Center) 3:45:00
2. Shaun Ward (National Team South Africa)
3. Alem Abebe (National Team Ethiopia)
4. Dylan Girdlestone (National Team South Africa) 3:45:02
5. Rémi Pelletier-Roy (Garneau-Quebecor)    3:45:27
6. Amanuel Meron (UCI Continental Center) 3:45:31
7. Alexey Schmidt (Team Type 1 – Sanofi)
8. Pierre Moncorge (Team Reine Blanche)
9. Nahom Desale (UCI Continental Center)
10. Aron Debretsion AS.BE.CO Cycling Team

35. Bruno Langlois (Garneau-Quebecor)    3:45:40
43. Jeffrey Werner (Garneau-Quebecor)    3:48:54
46. Jean-François Racine (Garneau-Quebecor    3:50:22
64. Tim Abercrombie (Garneau-Quebecor)    4:15:42

Jeff Werner races with Garneau-Québecor and is a designer and writer based in Vancouver.