A month before the World Road Championships in Kigali (professional race on September 28), the approach to the first world championship hosted by the African Continent reveals how special things can happen for the Ethiopian cyclist who received a floral tribute from a certain Tadej Pogacar in Saint-Malo.

During the Tour de France days, the best African prospects had undertaken a fruitful journey in Brittany, and a visit to the Grande Boucle was mandatory. Let's put it this way: that photo opportunity with the Slovenian champion further galvanized eighteen-year-old Tsige Kahsay Kiros, who is currently making her international debut on the roads of the Tour de l'Avenir Femmes (today's final double stage).

In France, representing the World Cycling Center Team, the girl from the border region with Eritrea is making technicians talk about her ability to compete without any inferiority complex against rivals who have already gained competitive experience of this magnitude. We're talking about the Tour of the young, a competition in which the team under the aegis of the International Cycling Union participates both in men's and women's categories, offering a range of riders from different geographical backgrounds, including Rwanda (with talent Jazilla Mwamikazi, already an Olympic mountain biker in Paris 2024), not just as a tribute to the upcoming World Championship.

Kiros has followed an ascending path first attending the UCI center in Paarl, South Africa, then moving to Europe (in Aigle, Switzerland, after a training camp with the WCC in the Rwandan capital), where Jazilla has already excelled on several occasions. In South Africa, she had first tested the bicycle from the neutral assistance of major world races. The response from the first stages spoke in favor of the Ethiopian athlete, who jumped to fifth place among climbers and was awarded on Tuesday as the most combative, capable of holding her own with the most prominent rivals in the group.

A CERTAIN IDEA OF FRANCE

Propitious and concrete advancement in the general classification (18th) after Wednesday's stage. "We saw her dominate at the elite level in the March 2025 Tour of Tigray, which took place in my and her home region, full of mountains, in northern Ethiopia (an area whose name evokes a long border conflict with Eritrea, ed). For my Team Amani, this was the first official women's experience, within a stage race where sport honored values of hope and unity. Tsige? I know her well, I'm extremely pleased to have followed her in this initial journey of dominated local races. She represents an important talented profile, and also offers a model for other girls who want to undertake two-wheel activity," comments an enthusiastic Tsgabu Grmay, a beacon of Ethiopian cycling with a long and still recent World Tour militancy.

Native of Adigudem, a town at 2100 meters, Kiros will at least have altimetric familiarity in tackling today's final day of the Avenir Femmes, composed of the La Rosiere half-stages. Near the Little Saint Bernard, the curtain will fall, while in France it's already time for World Championship selections (in the under-23 women's category, eyes are on Marion Bunel, who exactly one year ago triumphed at the top of Colle delle Finestre). And then there's Tsige, who in Ethiopia imitated Pogacar's celebration, coincidentally. For her, the Tour of Tigray, with its pioneering character, has built a bridge towards the historic world event in Kigali. Setting aside at least partially the individual result dynamics, this young Ethiopian inserts her striking cycling novitiate in the context of a double underline: the World Championship projects justified ambitions for African riders, and from September 29th onwards, a new chapter dense with stimuli will open, something not to be confined too much within the necessary (and even welcome) continental scale programming. Bridling the universal cycling fervor is, moreover, not something that suits Rwanda.

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