Most of the time, Lunsar is rather like another peculiar mining city in Sierra Leone’s Northern Province, however for one week of the 12 months the place is consumed by biking.
The Fundsmith Tour de Lunsar is greater than only a bike race. Sierra Leone is likely one of the economically poorest nations on the planet. Unemployment figures are excessive, particularly among the many younger. For many in Lunsar and throughout the west African nation, it is not overselling it to state that this race has offered a way of goal.
“With biking, rapidly there is a cause to be concerned,” Tom Owen – who’s concerned in fundraising for the race – mentioned to writebikerepeat.com of the race’s influence. “There’s a cause to remain right here. There’s one thing to dedicate your self to.
“Cycling has this actually highly effective means to enhance individuals’s lives. Being a bicycle owner isn’t nearly 5 days on the Tour de Lunsar; it’s about dedication, self-discipline and higher well being,” Owen added.
This 12 months’s tenth version very almost did not run as a consequence of monetary points. The race was saved by a crowdfunding marketing campaign and the late addition of a brand new title sponsor, Fundsmith. For 2024, a second stage was added to the ladies’s race by sponsorship from Zwift, making it the one girls’s stage race in west Africa. There was additionally a one-day race for junior males alongside the four-stage males’s elite race.
Although not on the UCI calendar, the Fundsmith Tour de Lunsar has grow to be one of the well-known occasions on the African biking scene, thanks partly to the hanging pictures that come from the race every year. It’s the exuberant assist of the followers, riders giving their all in donated equipment and the luxurious inexperienced Sierra Leone panorama that set aside the visuals of this race from another.
Oskar Scarsbrook was on the bottom to seize the scenes. Here are our favorite photographs.
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The junior males awaiting the beginning of their criterium race, sponsored by two Sierra Leonean companies – AFRICAP Apparel and FAMBUL
Time to get in some last-minute gasoline earlier than the racing begins
Some of the riders have been sporting equipment beforehand worn by skilled riders
Several riders have been racing in outdated Bora-Hansgrohe equipment which was donated by Le Col.
The girls’s stage race, sponsored by Zwift, is a uncommon alternative for feminine African riders to race a multi-day occasion
Will a Tour de France winner come out of Sierra Leone sooner or later?
The announcer will get the racing began
Fans getting the most effective view of the riders as they begin
The peloton assembles
The junior males kicked off the racing on Friday
No time for the elite males to cease for a snack
The girls’s race crosses a bridge as individuals wash garments within the river beneath
A mechanical challenge for one of many Team Flames riders
The males’s peloton are strung out
A member of the ladies’s Lunsar Cycling Team within the peloton
It’s clear to see what this occasion means to the neighborhood in and round Lunsar
The main group within the girls’s race
An acceleration by Ntui Bassey from Team Access, who made the journey from Nigeria to Sierra Leone
The girls’s peloton transfer by the luxurious countryside
A rider awaits help for a mechanical challenge
Attacks fly within the elite males’s race
The junior peloton raced laps across the city of Lunsar
The girls’s race was dominated by three riders from the Benin nationwide workforce
Riders from Team Flames on the entrance of the junior peloton
Ibrahim Jalloh of Lunsar Cycling Team within the Zwift Intermediate Sprint jersey on stage two
Road furnishings generally is a bit totally different in Sierra Leone
Young Sierra Leonean Blessing Jabbie (Kono Cycling Team) chases after the three leaders from Benin
Tenesie Dixon of Team Flames on the assault on stage two
A rider from the Nigerian Ilubirin workforce on the assault
Tenesie Dixon celebrates his stage two victory
Recovery time for total winner of the lads’s race, Emmanuel Bright of Nigeria and Team Ilubirin
It was a profitable race for the Beninoise riders
Stay cool
Ibrahim Jalloh celebrates maintaining maintain of the Zwift Intermediate Sprint jersey
Men’s stage two winner Tenesie Dixon finds a cool place after the race
Abu Bakarr Kamara of Lunsar Cycling Team celebrates his win within the junior race
The victorious Beninoise trio of Hermionne Ahouissou, Yetonde Raimatou Kpovihouede and Georgette Vignonfodo. Ahouissou took the general win
The large crowd awaits the rostrum ceremony
The junior males’s podium
Tenesie Dixon is held aloft by the native followers. He turned the primary Sierra Leonean winner of a stage of the lads’s race since 2022.