Rwanda is in pole position to win the race to host the 2025 World Road Championships, Times Sport has established.

The country submitted a bid host World Championships 2025 in September 2019 and now faces stiff competition from Morocco, which is also interested in hosting the world cycling event.

As it stands, Rwanda is said to be well ahead of Morocco in the race to win the bid to host the 2025 edition of the world cycling event.

Times Sport has established that Rwanda will this week sign a contract of agreement with UCI before the winner is announced on September 24 in Louvain, Belgium, just two days before the 2021 Road World Championship concludes.

A UCI inspection team was in Kigali in June to assess whether Rwanda fulfills all the requirements needed to host the tournament compared to what the national cycling federation (Ferwacy) mentioned in its official document bidding to host the tournament. 

During the visit, the team visited hotels expected to accommodate the delegates during the tournament and Rwanda’s cycling itineraries and met Sports Minister Aurore Mimosa Munyangaju before concluding their inspection.

The outcomes of the visit put Rwanda in a pole position to win the bid against the Moroccans, according to Ferwacy president Abdallah Murenzi, after impressing the team that was on the tour.

"They were impressed with the fact that what they found on ground pretty matches what was mentioned in the document submitted to UCI bidding to host the tournament and told us that it increased our chances of winning the bid to host the tournament,” said Murenzi, who is now in Belgium to sign the contract to host the event.

"We now reached the stage of signing a contract. We filed our final document and we agreed on every detail of the contract. We are hoping to sign it by the end of this week,” he said.

Signing the contract, however, does not mean that Rwanda has won the bid already. The contract is signed because, before a potential tournament host is announced, UCI must be assured of the potential host that they agree to abide by UCI’s conditions while organizing the tournament.

There is no official information that Rwanda has won the race todate but Murenzi is confident that the chances to win the bid are pretty high given the fact that Morocco has not been as keen to host the race recently.

"Signing the contract does not guarantee you that you have been selected but it gives you hope that you are 80 percent favorites to win the race to host the tournament,” Murenzi said.

The UCI Road World Championship is a big cycling tournament that attracts hundreds of participants from across the globe.

It attracts an estimated 5000 cyclists and over 20 000 delegates from different countries across the world.

Statistics also show that over 200 million follow the tournament via over 50 international media agencies that gather for coverage from the host nation.

"It’s a tournament that we hope will change the image of Rwanda’s cycling in terms of standards of organizing sporting events and the level of performance of its homegrown cyclists at international competitions,” said Murenzi.

Government intervention was crucial

Should Rwanda win the bid, Murenzi insists that credit will go first to the government which has tirelessly backed the federation’s push to host the tournament at all costs, from the day Rwanda announced its bid to host the Road World Championship.

President Paul Kagame’s warm reception to UCI President David Lappartient while on a working visit in Rwanda to attend Tour du Rwanda 2021 in May, showed the world cycling body the government’s commitment to support cycling in different departments, giving Ferwacy a vote of confidence in its bid to host the Road World Championship.

Murenzi said that the government has always been there to support the federation’s push to host the tournament since its official bid was announced in 2019.

"The support has been incredible and UCI has been impressed by Rwanda’s commitment to support us in this journey. The government showed total support and we have gone this far because of its contribution,” he said.

The official announcement of the 2025 UCI Road World Championship is expected to be attended by Sports Minister Munyangaju. 

With host nations until 2024 already known, Rwanda would be the first African country to host the world’s biggest cycling event since its inception in 1921.