Kigali hosts Africa's first UCI Road World Championships

Kigali will host the UCI Road World Championships this week, the first time the event takes place on African soil, with elite and age-category world titles decided from Sunday, September 21 to Sunday, September 28. Organisers say the championships will award rainbow jerseys across road races and time trials, with a full programme that opens with elite individual time trials and closes with the elite men's road race on September 28 in Rwanda's capital.

The routes out of Kigali are steep and relentless. Race maps show the elite men's road race stretches 267.5 kilometres and includes roughly 5,475 metres of climbing, while the elite women's time trial covers 31.2 kilometres with about 460 metres of ascent and the men's time trial is 40.6 kilometres with about 680 metres of climbing. Courses visit repeated climbs such as the Côte de Nyanza and the cobbled Côte de Kimihurura, features that organisers and route profiles have described as some of the hardest in modern world championships history.

Top names will start in Rwanda. Tadej Pogačar, the defending elite men's road champion, and Remco Evenepoel, the reigning elite men's time trial champion, are both entered and are widely...