http://velonews.competitor.com/2015/08/news/eritrea-celebrates-kudus-and-teklehaimanot-after-tour-ride_380515
Eritrea celebrates Kudus and Teklehaimanot after Tour ride
By Gregor Brown
Published 1 hour ago
MILAN (VN) — The Tour de France rolled into Paris for its final stage
over a week ago, but the party continues in East Africa’s Eritrea. The
country welcomed home Merhawi Kudus and Daniel Teklehaimanot Saturday
after they helped MTN-Qhubeka become the first professional team from
the African continent to race the grand tour.
Kudus, 21, was the youngest rider in the 2015 race. Teklehaimanot
became the first African to wear the polka-dot climber’s jersey,
taking it for four stages in the first half of the three-week race.
Pushing the South African team’s debut to a new high, Brit Steve
Cummings won the stage to Mende on the day millions celebrated Nelson
Mandela.
“It was huge for the team, it was huge for Africa,” general manager
Doug Ryder told VeloNews last week.
“It’s an honor that now our Africans are known and that we need to
step up the team structure even more to support them.”
“It’s great for cycling to get an African team,” Cummings explained at
the Tour. “There’s a lot of talent in Africa who doesn’t get a chance.
[The team] makes sport bigger and better across five continents.”
Eritrea and the rest of Africa went crazy for the nine-man team. From
Utrecht to Paris, a group of Eritrean-flag-waving fans followed MTN’s
black and white bus. Most days, while the French applauded and pointed
at the stars, the Eritrean supporters sang and danced for the
country’s first cyclists in the Tour.
Given the party atmosphere over the three weeks, it seemed only right
that when Kudus and 26-year-old Teklehaimanot touched down in the
capital city of Asmara that the stage gave them a hero’s welcome.
Team MTN-Qhubeka called the celebration “crazy.” Images, beamed around
the country live on state television ERI-TV, showed thousands of
locals lined along the main streets of Asmara waving the country’s
blue, red, and green colors and dressed in polka-dots. Kudus and
Teklehaimanot sat on top of white Toyota trucks in matching red dots
for a ride from the Asmara International Airport to the president’s
palace to meet Isaias Afwerki.
The two were interviewed on television and sat as special guests —
Kudus in the team’s black colors and Teklehaimanot in a polka-dot
jersey he brought home from France — while locals sang and danced in
their honor at the Bahti Meskerem Square.
Eritrea, still recovering from a war with Ethiopia, sits a lowly 42nd
in a list of the richest African countries. With Kudus and
Teklehaimanot reaching a global audience during three weeks of the
Tour de France, an entire nation’s spirits appeared to be lifted.
Received on Tue Aug 04 2015 - 17:18:25 EDT