Pro racing near an active war zone? World Tour teams may pull out of Tour du Rwanda amidst serious safety concerns
Cycling
The World Championships will take place in Rwanda this year, and so more than ever the Tour du Rwanda's notoriety and importance grows. However facing big questions and concerns over an armed conflict where the African nation is involved, a few of the top teams may decide last-minute to forfeit the event.
The World Championships' first edition in the African continent is an historical milestone, however with seven months to go there are major concerns of it's viability. The event will take place in Rwanda, based on it's capital of Kigali, which has proven to be an extremely popular cycling hotspot as shown in the country's top race.
But in recent weeks an armed conflict has re-opened in the nearby Congo. Since 2022, Rwandan forces have entered the internationally recognized borders of the Congo to support the M23 rebel groups against the Congolese government. Perhaps this would go rather unnoticed in the world of professional cycling, but that is not the case because the Tour du Rwanda will be racing only a few dozen kilometers away from the active conflict area.
The geopolitical situation is a complex one and it is very unlikely to be resolved in the upcoming weeks. The race begins on the 23rd February, and teams such as Soudal - Quick-Step, UAE Team Emirates - XRG, Lotto, Israel - Premier Tech, Team Picnic PostNL and TotalEnergies will have either their elite or under-23 structures present (although they can freely choose riders from their elite team, under specific conditions).
Het Nieuiwsblad questions Soudal - Quick-Step DS Kevin Hulsmans over the possibility of the team not taking part in the event which starts in just over two weeks. “I have done the Tour of Rwanda twice in the past as sports director. Beautiful race, fun to ride, great field of participants. Normally at least. Because now I am quite worried. I have looked at the stage schedule and stages three and four will be a stone's throw from where the rebels are. It is perhaps fifty kilometers less. Including an overnight stay in that region. I do have some questions about that.”
Kigali itself is only 160 kilometers away from the city of Goma where Rwandan-backed forces entered only days ago, but the race will take place at times only dozens of kilometers away from the border and it will even include an overnight stay in the region - only kilometers away from an area where there is active shelling from both sides which is leading to civilian casualties.
Team CEO Jurgen Foré shares the concerns over the possibility of having his riders so close to the conflict zone, where a lot can happen. "They guarantee our safety, they say. But what does that mean? Even if there is only a small chance that something will happen, even that is too much. I am willing to believe that there is nothing wrong in the interior of Rwanda and that everything is calm and safe. But we would have at least liked them to stay further away from the region in question. And that is not the intention at the moment. That is a cause for concern.”
Currently this developing situation not only threatens the Tour du Rwanda itself, but also the very possibility of the World Championships taking place in Kigali. Although the UCI denies it, there are rumours that a 'plan B' route is being organized in Switzerland if the situation does not improve.
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Rainy day ahead at the #EDB25, but this won’t stop the guys from giving their best again 👊 pic.twitter.com/pZUAJ4M24K
— Soudal Quick-Step Pro Cycling Team (@soudalquickstep) February 7, 2025
Oi! Get it together UCI. Relocate now. Racing is dangerous enough without being Km's from an active war zone!
So much for the locals being massacred then. I guess as long as we continue to have access to the artificially low priced exploited ressources there and can enrich ourselves on stock markets investing in arms manufacturers, worrying about sports events is about the most upsetting thing that can happen to us right?
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- Great commentCaralladas05-04-2025
- i’m such a sucker for those group-hug, happy ending moments between competitors, largely because it’s so WASN’T that way in my younger, stronger days. (on that note, i have this hope that somewhere down the road, maybe fifteen or twenty years, a middle aged wout and mathieu will go for a pleasure ride together in flanders, and reminisce about the days when they were the young, strong monsters that stalked the cobbles.)OCexile05-04-2025
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025
- That’s not quite true, even steep climbs and sudden gradient changes can be considered as remaining tangential to the wheel whereas the occasional dip between cobbles a wheel drops into cannot, as such riding over cobbles can become like a permanent surmounting of small obstacles that hit back into your wheel slowing you drastically if you don’t have the right rhythm to “fly” on the mounds, here again the greater the momentum the less these obstacles reduce your speed. But, it is but one factor, you cannot decide on this alone. Like with natural surface ripple formation on desert tracks used by vehicles, there is an optimal speed range to efficiently pass over such surfaces, too fast or slow and your car gets shaken to pieces from the “harmonics” in the vibrations caused. Pretty sure the same applies to riding on cobbles.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- I am saying I have an open mind at the moment for your cobbles theory but cannot agree with your wind statement (and by extrapolation sprinting since that implies speeds where wind is by far the limiting factor). Had you argued all things not being equal I could have agreed with you but if we thus assume 2 objets of the same size and speed but with differing weights, it is completely obvious that the lighter one will suffer faster in the wind. Extrapolate to the extreme, drop stuff off cliffs or just remember your momentum equations to verify. Now, obviously in real life we have to assume riders of different weights won’t have the same wind hitting surface but you cannot generalise at all then as you can have very unaerodynamic light riders and very aerodynamic heavy ones because it isn’t weight that defines CdA, Teslas have an incredible CdA and are ridiculously heavy, and someone like Harry Levreyssen is a Tesla in cycling.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- When Roglic beat Geraint Thomas on the last day's TT at the Giro, I remember just how unbelievably emotional his team was. One guy, I forget who, German rider I think, was interviewed and was nearly speechless with a really drawn out "fuuuuuuuuuck it's incredible" comment. And then something even more amazing happened. Geraint Thomas came through the ranks of the Jumbo Visma riders and congratulated them all. True, honest, sincere, sportsmanlike, and celebratory of what had been achieved. Here he was, getting second, and he meant it. And cycling these days is like that, as you say - the way Pogacar hugged Matthews in Quebec, the way Matthews congratulated Pogacar in Montreal, on and on they honor and respect each other. It's pretty great.RidesHills04-04-2025