The first World Cycling Championship in Africa? In six months, on September 28, 2025, the world event in Kigali, Rwanda, will conclude with the main race, for which a monarch named Tadej and surnamed Pogacar has everything to grant - the only concession that suits him - the winning repeat, after Zurich 2024.

With a season in full swing under the banner of the challenge between tenors in Sanremo, from today the appointment in the heart of the African Continent polarizes attention, bringing the capital of a small State defined as the Land of a Thousand Hills onto the map of Grand Cycling.

The author's pedaling in equatorial sauce is unequivocally confirmed by the recent Tour du Rwanda, propitiated not by chance by the establishment over time of the main African stage race. Yes, anyone involved will reiterate how without that professional event between February and March, in its 17 editions, it would not have been possible to imagine that Kigali would go hand in hand with the world championship. To avoid any misunderstanding, the World Championship dramatically reflects the Rwandan strategy of investing in major sporting events (Visit Rwanda sponsor of three top football teams like Bayern, Arsenal, and PSG), linked in this case to a precise will by the UCI, animated by the design of globalizing the two-wheel sport, seizing through an articulated action plan the many development potentials of cycling and more generally of the bicycle in an extremely young Continent. Starting precisely from the host nation, which has just recalled to the streets a public comparable to that which followed European races in the 60s, institutions believe that the World Championship (organizationally worked on by a tandem composed of French Aso and Belgian Golazo) can represent a lasting legacy, extended to all 54 nations that are part of the African Cycling Union.

The search for an eagerly awaited call-up, seen from Kigali and the African Countries that will have to fight hardest to accumulate UCI points in these months, has the face of boys and girls for whom being at the world event in Rwanda is also a springboard towards the possibility of writing the History of cycling, and not just a basic landing.

The Bugesera Generation is champing at the bit, if we were to take as an example the very popular promotion center that has sprung up on the outskirts of the capital, baptized "The Field of Dreams", recently included in the African World Cycling Center under UCI aegis. Many words will still be spent on the harshness of the world race, whether it's the lap to be repeated 15 times or the mid-race lap with Mt. Kigali and Mur du Kigali, because who said that pavé has a limit in terms of hosting Parallel?

On the international tension front, recent talks between Rwanda and Congo seem to hint at a de-escalation compared to a month ago: given that within Rwandan borders the security situation has always been maximum, it is too early to say (certainly not hoping for petty cycling shop interests) whether in six months much will be conducted within the path of a difficult solution to long-standing problems.

From the UCI, absolute serenity filters about the vaccine issue to which athletes and visitors must submit: times and methods are judged compatible with the cycling calendar. Last but not least, the travel costs issue, around which the narrative of some seems to have been a bit dramatizing. From Italy, as of today, Kigali is reached at the end of September for about 350/400 euros by flying (with a stopover in Addis Abeba) Ethiopian from Malpensa, but this is just an example of similar fares from France and other European countries, whether flying with Rwandair (which will enhance connections), Brussels Airlines or other carriers like Turkish (a "powerful" price of 341 euros departing from Milan with a stopover in Istanbul). Hotels? The capital has a wide range of rooms that in the case of proposals selected through the UCI site do not lead to out-of-control figures, we are not in the low-cost field but neither at the mercy of ad hoc increases. On booking.com, 110 euros for a double room at Park Inn by Radisson, in the city center, deserve a memo. Even if, it's worth remembering, organizing a trip for a national team that includes all categories, the transport of materials and everything that revolves around a world week is not exactly as simple as booking a bed & breakfast.

To be visited as a tribute to Rwandan history is the Genocide Memorial that led to the death of 800,000 Tutsi ethnic people. It was 1994 and we can say that two wheels have played and exercise a role in the country's rebirth process from an immense tragedy. A place with a carefully curated and silent layout, the museum goes beyond the dimension of a dutiful pause from the sporting celebration. That memorial is an integral part of daily life.

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