The 3 Afican teams will fight out the Rwandan championship. Project Africa the strongest with 4/7 riders as also the only 3 climbers in todays mountain event.
Kenya with one and Eritel with 2 riders need a breakaway today.
Project: Africa actually with 2x2 squads. Niyonshuti as strongest climber has low support while the 2nd squad includes Hategeka and Ndayisenga. Two pretty decent climbers and favourites #2 and #3.
Worst case for Project: Africa though. While Eritel sends Hadi and Kenya Uwizeymana, P:A is only sending Nsengimana.
All three are similar strong climbers but the P:A rider possible the weakest and having 3 strong climbers in the back surely is not ideal.
And they don`t show much motivation to win today. 6min with 40km to go.
Though with 15km and a gap of 11min the trio decides to cooperate and start to chase. Eritel`s Rudahunga in problems now.
Hategeka also with problems. So it`s 1:1 of each P:A squad chasing hard. The gap is down to 4min! Just 2 1/2 km later. Wow.
Niyonshuti is much more careful on the downhill. Ndayisenga having a bit of a gap and actually is just behind Nsengimana and Uweizeyimana.
Hadi though decided to do something against the danger from behind. So he also has attacked and is a bit ahead.
And obviously Project Africa thinks, they have caught the break as they look at each other again.
But they haven`t!
Hadi still out there and now with a growing gap again! Big opportunity for him.
The pace behind is as slow that even Rudahunga makes it back.
Hadi celebrates a great solo victory. It is a weird one but he won`t care.
Ndayisenga sprints for 2nd ahead of Niyonshuti. It looked like he wanted to celebrate. Then he checked the big screen with Hadi on the podium! Huge fail by Project: Africa today, who clearly should have won this.
Janvier Hadi
