Gasore Hategeka was one of the first members of the post original five members of Team Rwanda Cycling. Gasore was the beginning of Team Rwanda 2.0. I remember the day he showed up to the Team House in Musanze, long before there was an Africa Rising Cycling Center (ARCC). It was 2009, and I had been on the ground in Rwanda for only a few months. I was there to assist Project Rwanda, but as a recreational road cyclist, I naturally gravitated toward the team.
Meeting Gasore….or was he Alex?
Jock was packing up to head back to the US for a few weeks. The electricity was barely holding that day. I was told I’d be working a race that weekend, the first Kwita Izina event, and I had a French mechanic a few weeks on the job in Rwanda. Maxime spoke zero English, I spoke zero French so we yelled and pantomimed our way through conversations.
Then Gasore shows up to test. He rode the velotron for a bit, but Jock could not capture the data needed to determine if he had what it took. He told me to add him to the team for that weekend’s race. Gasore spoke no English or French, only Kinyarwanda. How were we to communicate? Rafiki was our only translator at the time but we still managed to give him the wrong name for the next few weeks. We called him Alex. I have no idea how we landed on Alex.
Gasore “Alex” surprised us all. Over the next three days, Max and I yelled at each other, tried to manage the team and could only seem to agree and communicate on one thing, Gasore had “it”. I called Jock in California after the race and told him all about Gasore’s performance. I wasn’t a coach but anyone could tell, he could be great.
2012 Olympic Selection Race
In November 2010, Rwanda hosted the African Continental Road Cycling Championships. It was planned in order for Rwanda to take home course advantage in an Olympic selection year. Adrien Niyonshuti was racing for Douglas Ryder’s MTN Energade South African Continental Team and was in the best position to secure an Olympic qualification bid, which would be a first for Rwanda. Gasore was a part of that plan…
That was a pivotal moment in the history of Team Rwanda Cycling. At this year’s Tour du Rwanda, Jeremy Ford showed Gasore this clip and asked about his thoughts from that day almost 15 years ago.
Gasore is now a 38 year old father of three still working in cycling with his own young club development team in Shashwara. He’s working with the UCI Continental Team, May Stars, at this year’s Tour du Rwanda. Here is what he had to say…
Team Africa Rising is so thankful for the Rising From Ashes documentary which chronicled the amazing achievements of those early years. Rising From Ashes recently received a second life when the Director, TC Johnstone, released it free of charge on YouTube. Over 43,000 people have watching this remarkable story. If you haven’t seen it yet, or want to be inspired once again, watch it HERE.
