“I think that only 10% of runners will finish” … why the course of the elite race is the hardest in history

Tadej Pogacar is the big favorite to follow one another at the world championship championship, given the difficulty of the course around Kigali (Rwanda), almost 270 kilometers long on Sunday.

267.5 kilometers to go, with a positive elevation of 5,475 meters. This is the more than generous menu, which awaits the runners of the elite racing men from cycling worlds, Sunday September 28 in Kigali (Rwanda). The International Cycling Union (UCI) already presents the course as “The most difficult in history”. In the 21st century, it was in any case that with the most elevation, in front of the Innsbruck course in 2018 (5,020 m). It could not be otherwise in the land of the thousand hills.

Many of them have already drove on Rwandan roads and have already taken the World Cup course. Among them, the Estonian Rein Taaramäe, a former co -de -cofidis and totalnergies runner, who is now evolving under the colors of the Japanese team Kinan, and who will still represent his country on Sunday at 38. “I think only 10% of runners will end the race”he assured in February, when Franceinfo: Sport had met him during his training course in Rwanda, a country where he comes regularly because of his relief and his altitude.

For many other runners, the recognitions organized in the week have enabled them to discover the difficulties that await them: they will borrow a first loop, to travel nine times, with the Kigali golf coast (800 m at 8.1% average), and that of Kimihurura, paved (1.3 km at 6.3%), which will already sort it out in the peloton. After this loop, they will borrow a second, 42 kilometers, which goes through Mont Kigali (5.9 km at 6.9%), which will be followed almost immediately from the Kigali wall, an impressive transition to irregular pavers over 400 meters, on the coast, at 11% on average. This wall will continue the selection from the runners, before they return to the first circuit, which they will travel six times. The last kilometers before the arrival will finally be positive elevation, including the Kimihurura coast, particularly steep.

“This coast is very hard, it is pavement that can be compared to Flander pavement, to which we must add the 1,500 meters above sea level, the climate, humidity, heat. I think it will be phenomenal in terms of difficulty”warns Fabien Doubey (Totalenergies), last winner of the Rwanda Tour, who knows the course in Kigali. These are these crystizers, the weather and the cobblestones, which will make this elite men's race even more formidable than that which is looming in Sallanches (Haute-Savoie) in 2027, with 5,700 meters of elevation.

“It's super hard, it never stops going up or going down, there is no dish, there is even pavement in the bumps. Even going at a training rate, it's very hard”also blowed, in Franceinfo: Sport, Ugo Fabries, French runner of the reserve team of UAE Team-Emirates XRG, after recognition in Kigali during the Tour du Rwanda.

Faced with such a difficulty, and in the absence of Jonas Vingegaard, Tadej Pogacar logically acts as a favorite to keep the rainbow jersey. But how much will they be to finish the race? In Innsbruck in 2018, only 76 of the 188 committed runners had passed the finish line. “I can assure you that many runners will be boiled, well before arrival”plans Thomas Voeckler, the French coach, at the microphone of Eurosport. For the first world cycling worlds on its soil, the African continent hopes that at least one of its representatives will end up the race, but nothing is less certain. In 2024, only the Eritrean Natnael Tesfatsion had been classified, which was better than in 2023, where no African runner had finished the elite men's test.