Professional road racing cyclist Daniel Teklehaimanot, the winner of Tour du Rwanda 2010, will be making a sensational return to the race, this time playing for Team Eritrea.

The Eritrean, 34, has not competed in Tour du Rwanda since he won the race in 2010 and is expected to be on the Eritrean national cycling team roster ahead of the much-anticipated 15th edition of race slated for February 19-26.

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The five-man roster also includes Andemaryam Mesfin Hager, Habtab Yoel, Arefayne Aklilu and Aman Awet.

Eritrea is one of teams that have been performing well in Tour du Rwanda in the past editions before they missed in the 2022 edition.

Teklehaimanot won the Tour du Rwanda in 2010 and went on to become the first Eritrean to compete at the Summer Olympics outside athletics finishing 73rd in the road race competition.

At 21-year-old, he was the first black African to compete at the Tour de France back in 2015.

In July of the same year, he also became the first rider from an African team to wear the polka dot jersey at the Tour de France. The jersey is given to the rider that gains the most points for reaching mountain summits first.

In 2016, he again won the mountains classification at the Critérium du Dauphiné, an annual cycling road race in the Dauphiné region in the southeast of France.

Teklehaimanot was named in the start list for the 2017 Giro d’Italia where he briefly held the Mountains Classification jersey.

His final race with Dimension Data was the 2017 Tour of Guangxi.