Benin is about to make historical past this September as its ladies’s nationwide biking group will turn out to be the primary African squad to compete in a significant UCI-sanctioned race on U.S. soil, organisers of the Maryland Biking Traditional introduced Thursday.
Earlier this spring, top-tier groups together with CANYON//SRAM Zondacrypto, EF Schooling–Oatly, and Crew USA confirmed their participation within the ladies’s area. The addition of Benin’s nationwide group now sends a robust message concerning the world growth of ladies’s biking.
“The participation of the Benin Girls’s Nationwide Crew holds a number of significance on and off the bike,” mentioned Steve Brunner, the race’s Government Director. “Because the expertise pool continues to develop on the African continent, it’s essential to supply alternatives in world-class races just like the Maryland Biking Traditional. Kimberly (Coats) and her group have put in a number of nice work with the Benin Biking Federation to develop expertise, particularly figuring out elite-level ladies. So, it’s nice to supply a platform for these ladies to carry out and be recognised.”
Whereas Eritrea has historically led African highway biking, Benin is hoping to emerge as a rising power. The nation made its debut on the UCI Street World Championships in 2024 with 17-year-old Georgette Vignonfodo, who completed a hundred and tenth within the Junior Girls’s race. That very same week, Exodus Saizonou turned the primary male bike owner from Benin to compete at World Championships, ending sixty fifth within the males’s Junior Particular person Time Trial. And Hermionne Ahouissou, who competed within the elite ladies’s class, ending 68th within the Girls Elite Particular person Time Trial however DNF’d within the highway race.
“As president of the Benin Biking Federation, I’m glad to just accept this invitation for our ladies’s nationwide group to race The Maryland Biking Traditional. This might be a second of delight for our nation, and glorious preparation forward of the UCI World Championships in Rwanda simply weeks later,” mentioned Romuald Hazoumè, president of the Benin Biking Federation.
The 2025 UCI Street World Championships, happening in Rwanda from September 21–28, would be the first time the occasion is held on African soil.
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Past bike racing, Crew Benin’s presence in Baltimore additionally reinforces rising cultural and diplomatic ties. “The State of Maryland and the Metropolis of Baltimore have rising connections to Benin,” mentioned Terry Hasseltine, president of the Sport & Leisure Company of Maryland. “Their involvement within the Maryland Biking Traditional is a significant extension of that relationship.”
Benin’s nationwide group might be certainly one of 15 squads competing within the ladies’s area, providing American followers their first probability to witness this degree of worldwide ladies’s racing because the Amgen Tour of California final ran in 2019.
Each the lads’s and girls’s races will happen on September 6, following comparable programs that showcase Baltimore’s rolling terrain and culminate in a quick circuit end across the metropolis’s Internal Harbor. The males’s preliminary participation record was launched final month, headlined by WorldTour squads Lidl–Trek, EF Schooling–EasyPost, and Crew Jayco–AlUla. Full course particulars and the whole race week schedule might be introduced quickly.
