Rwanda Cycling Federation and Team Rwanda Cycling will organize a two-week training camp for junior riders from December 7-20 at the Africa Rising Cycling Center in Musanze in a bid to continue nurturing budding talents.

The top two junior riders from each of the top five clubs affiliated to the Rwanda Cycling Federation (FERWACY) including Benediction, CCA, Cine Elmay, Fly Cycling club and Les Amis Sportifs, will be trained by Belgian expert, Simon Hupperetz.

This will be the first training camp for the junior riders aged between 15-18 years.

According to Hupperetz, the first five days will focus on testing the riders’ skills and on the velotron which tests watts (static bike), core stability training sessions and introduction to English classes.

From December 14 to 18, they will focus more on longer rides and a bit of stability. Those who will have tested well on the bike will concentrate on mountain bike like working on the circuit, riding, analyzing videos, technical training and debriefing.

"I am happy to run a training camp with juniors because they are the future of this country in terms of cycling. We have to work with them so that we can have a very wide base on our pyramid.

"It is going to be interesting and I will be trying to teach them so many things on the bike and off the bike related to what the senior riders do,” said Hupperetz.

The Belgian added, "Mountain bike is a very good school for cyclists for instance Peter Sagan used to ride mountain bike until he was 18. He is an example for many cyclists because his skills on the bike are amazing.”

Sagan is a Slovak professional road bicycle racer for World Tour team Tinkoff-Saxo Sagan had a successful junior cyclo-cross and mountain bike racing career, winning the Junior World Championship in 2008, before moving to road racing.