We are all still mourning the premature exit of Biniam Girmay from this year’s Giro d’Italia after a couple of falls on a very wet and slippery descent on stage 4 on Tuesday.

His team put out an update on his condition which you can read HERE if of interest. We wish Bini a speedy recovery, as we hope to see him at the Tour de France Grand Depart in Florence on 29 June.

Bini currently leads the latest UCI Africa Tour rider rankings, by a significant margin, see graphic below. He, and his counterparts from Eritrea, really are leading the way in terms of UCI points accumulation, with four of the top five riders hailing from Africa’s #1 cycling nation.

Current UCI Rider Rankings (9 May 2024):

It is also good to see 13 of the top 20 riders being under 30 years old, so there is a lot of racing for these guys still to do over the coming years. A shout-out to Alexandre Mayer of Mauritius who recently joined Saint Pirian Pro Cycling, a UCI Continental cycling team, based in the UK, so we expect to see him accumulating some great points this year.

Current Nation Rankings (9 May 2024)

Mauritius (630 points) have now moved up to sixth place in the Nation Rankings, and will most likely take the fifth spot from Rwanda (644 points) soon, with no Rwandan cyclists racing in the top levels of the sport. Eritrea (2,840 points), South Africa (1264 points), Morocco (1,155 points) and Algeria (768 points) remain the real powerhouses of African Cycling. All rankings can be seen HERE on the UCI website.

Fingers crossed now for the next few weeks to see how many African cyclists will make the starting squad announcements for the 2024 Tour de France. Realistically, these will be from: Louise Meintjes and Ryan Gibbons (SA); and Biniam, Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier, Natnael Tesfatsion and Henok Mulubrhan (ERI).

Good luck to all to make the respective team squad announcements in the coming weeks! #TDF2024