Junior riders chasing the highest targets

Another challenging week awaits the Namibian team at the UCI world road cycling championship in Rwanda’s capital Kigali this week.National coach Hans du Toit and four junior riders departed from Windhoek over the weekend on their way to Rwanda, where they will join up with Namibian under 23 women’s champion Monique du Plessis who is already in Kigali as part of a development camp of the Confederation of African Cycling.Roger Surén, Marco Thiel, Rosemarie Thiel and Delsia van Vuuren were the four junior riders selected by the Namibia Cycling Federation.Du Toit says the Namibians will give their best as usual in the individual time trial championships (distance just over 20 km), although their main focus would be to do well in the road races later this week.The road races are expected to be extremely challenging.“The junior women will have total climbs of about 1,500 metres over their distance of 75 km, while the 120 km route for junior men will have a total ascent of about 2,500 metres,” Du Toit explains.“The lap route of 15 km through Kigali not only contains very steep climbs, but will also require good technical riding abilities. One of the climbs will be almost one kilometre on cobble stones, for instance.”Du Toit, Surén and Janse van Vuuren just returned home last week from the UCI mountain biking world championship in Switzerland, where Surén excelled with the country’s first-ever medal in the junior men’s race.However, the scheduling did not leave them much time for optimal preparation for specifically taking on the world’s best road cyclists, although Du Toit points out that both riders are fit and talented cyclists.Rosemarie Thiel already had a taste of success on the continental level when she won a silver medal in the junior women’s individual time trial at the African Schools Games in Algeria at the end of July.Qualification for the 2026 Youth Olympic Summer Games in Dakar, Senegal (October-November next year), is a main goal of the Namibian mission. “We are not entirely sure yet what the criteria for qualification is, although we know that presence at the UCI world championship is a known requirement.”The absence of elite men or elite women is due to the fact that Namibia is not included on the list of countries with an allotted quota of automatically invited riders and its candidates would thus need to qualify, which they did not.The president of the NCF, Tauko Shilongo, will represent the country at the UCI’s congress in Kigali on Thursday.This week’s schedule featuring Namibian riders (no time difference):Monday 22 September 2025Women Under 23 individual time trial, 10:35-12:45 (Monique du Plessis).Tuesday 23 September 2025&bull; Junior women individual time trial, 10:45-12:45 (Delsia van Vuuren, Rosemarie Thiel).&bull; Junior men individual time trial, 14:00-16:30 (Roger Surén, Marco Thiel).Thursday 24 SeptemberWomen Under 23 road race, 13:05-16:30 (Monique du Plessis).Friday 26 September 2025Junior men road race, 08:00-11:15 (Roger Surén, Marco Thiel)Saturday 27 September 2025Junior women road race, 08:20-10:40 (Delsia van Vuuren, Rosemarie Thiel).– andrew@nsh.com.na

Junior riders chasing the highest targets

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Junior riders chasing the highest targets

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