There had been much written in the build-up to the 2025 UCI Road World Championships in Rwanda – the first on African soil – about whether it could live up to its billing. Yet, once the action got underway last weekend, stresses about logistics, infrastructure and its potential legacy were quickly drowned out by the noise coming from the roadsides in and around Kigali, particularly during the elite men's and women's road races this last weekend.
The sheer scale of the crowds along the routes was hard to comprehend from TV pictures, but my Cyclingnews colleagues on the ground, Kirsten Frattini and Matilda Price, were in no doubt that they had never witnessed a bike race watched by so many people before.
