Half an hour after Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) celebrated his historic victory within the Paris Olympic Video games highway race, Charles Kagimu lit up the world on the Trocadéro in Paris, rolling in because the final finisher of the 273km race. The gang have been genuinely appreciative of the 25-year-old’s scrappy trip within the day’s early breakaway and his battle to jot down his identify into historical past as the primary Ugandan Olympic bicycle owner in 40 years.
Kagimu is not any stranger to epic racing, having accomplished a brutal version of the Unbound Gravel 200 final 12 months with Staff Amani, however the Olympics have been one other degree of depth with streets packed 10-deep with screaming followers. The ambiance impressed Kagimu to battle by means of the most important setback of falling severely unwell after the opening ceremony.
“After the opening ceremony, I used to be actually sick. I had a very unhealthy flu and on Saturday I actually could not get off the bed. So being right here and with the ability to end the race is such an enormous accomplishment,” Kagimu advised Cyclingnews.
The sickness wasn’t the one problem Kagimu confronted heading into the Olympics. He did not have a correct bike to race on, however the Ugandan Olympic Committee introduced him with a brand new Specialised Tarmac S-Works SL8 simply earlier than the Video games. Getting used to a brand new bike so near the race he stated introduced “just a few challenges” however he made probably the most of it, spending close to 190 kilometres off the entrance within the day’s first assault.
Kagimu, the African Video games time trial winner, went on the assault virtually from the flag drop, making the early breakaway with Eric Manizabayo (Rwanda), Thanakhan Chaiyasombat (Thailand), Christopher Rougier-Lagane (Mauritius) and Achraf Ed Doghmy (Morocco). The group gained as much as 16 minutes on the principle peloton earlier than lastly being joined by a counter-attack containing Elia Viviani (Italy), Ryan Mullen (Eire), and Georgios Bouglas (Greece).
The peloton lastly got here to life with the brand new assault and the tempo within the breakaway additionally rose, kicking Manizabayo, Chaiyasombat and Doghmy out of the transfer. Nonetheless, Kagimu held on till round 90km to go.
“We knew the great guys would catch us so it was good to have a head begin and do our personal tempo on the entrance,” stated Kagimu. “After the blokes caught us the tempo was fairly excessive and I made a decision to trip my very own tempo.”
“It was actually mind-blowing to see such crowds – the final time I noticed such crowds was in Glasgow and in Rwanda. So it was good to see to have such crowds they usually simply gave me lots of motivation to complete the race.”
Due to the drive to have equality between the lads’s and girls’s fields on the Olympics, the UCI drastically lowered the scale of the groups for the lads’s race in contrast with earlier years, with a most of 4 riders per group and solely 90 starters. It is a large hit for many of the high professionals however Kagimu is firmly in favour of the format, a lot in order that he is not even wanting ahead to the UCI Highway World Championships in Rwanda subsequent 12 months as a result of he could be racing alone towards groups of eight riders.
“I am not likely an enormous fan of doing the World Championships, given the character of the race. Right here, it was very nice to have guys trip on the entrance as a result of it is simpler to trip away if you’re weaker groups,” stated Kagimu.
“Additionally, it was fairly arduous for all the opposite groups to manage the race. However the World Championships have a special format. You’ve groups that are round eight riders beginning the race. So yeah, for me doing the highway race beginning alone would not actually make sense, tactically.”
The Olympic format gave riders like Kagimu a combating likelihood, and regardless of his sickness and last-minute changes to a brand new bike, he and his breakaway companions made probably the most of it.
