In the end year 2018 message to Rwandans, Kagame said Rwanda achieved a lot last year and lot more is coming in 2019.<\/p>\n
Among commendable achievements is the good performance in sports particularly in cycling as Team Rwanda won tournaments on African continent while it also participated in other worldwide biggest cycling races.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn sports, Rwandans showcased ability and performed well on the international level mostly in cycling,\u201d Kagame said.<\/p>\n
{{Rwanda\u2019s Cycling Team in 2018
\n}}<\/p>\n
The year 2018 started with Rwandans celebrating as Joseph Areruya became the first Rwandan to win the UCI (International Cycling Union) 2.1 race when he emerged winner of La Tropicale Amissa Bongo, the biggest cycling race on the UCI-Africa Tour which was held in Gabon from 15th to 21st January 2018.<\/p>\n
Areruya won the race in Team Rwanda jersey where he competed with Didier Munyaneza, Valens Ndayisenga, Jean Ruberwa, Jean Paul Ren\u00e9 Ukiniwabo and Bonaventure Uwizeyimana.<\/p>\n
Joy for Rwandan lovers of the cycling game continued on February 4th,2018 when Rwanda\u2019s U-23 team which was composed by Samuel Mugisha, Didier Munyaneza, Jean Paul Ren\u00e9 Ukiniwabo, Jean Ruberwa, Samuel Hakiruwizeye and Joseph Areruya won \u2018Tour de l\u2019Espoir\u2019, a racing competition which was staged in Cameroon. <\/p>\n
This made Rwanda qualify to U23 Tour de France which was held in France from 17th until 26th August 2018.<\/p>\n
Rwandans won Tour du Rwanda for the fifth time in row when Samuel Mugisha was worn the yellow jersey at Kigali Stadium after covering the 953.2km distance of the 8-stage race in 24 hours, 26 minutes and 53 seconds.<\/p>\n
To win the tour, Mugisha, \u2018the King of the Mountains\u2019 who also became the youngest rider to win the race in history, beat his closest contender and compatriot, Jean Claude Uwizeye by 21 seconds after the latter clocked 24h27\u201914\u201d while Ethiopian Mulu Hailemicheal finished in the third place clocking 25h27\u201957\u201d, one minute and four seconds behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The President of the Republic of Rwanda, Paul Kagame has said the year 2018 has left Rwanda\u2019s cycling game in a commendable state in Africa as Rwandan cyclist Joseph Areruya was voted Africa\u2019s best cyclist of the year 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-38713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38713"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=38713"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=38713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}