Africa: Ryder On the Storm - MTN-Qhubeka Will Be the First African Team to Race the Tour De France

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Clear your calendar, say farewell to your family: the Tour de France is upon us. This year, Africans have a horse in the race - Team MTN-Qhubeka is the first officially African outfit to field a team in the sport's grandest race. It is a monumental moment for cycling, and a proud month for African sport - it may signal the end of European and American dominance on the bicycle, and the start of the African era. By RICHARD POPLAK.

Sports writers are a funny bunch. Funnier still are non-sports writers who occasionally write sports stories. (I'm writing these words while hanging my head in shame.) There's a tendency to craft Grand Elemental Narratives about the Essential Nature of Life out of the raw material of a football game or a boxing match - events that can't really sustain all the philosophical huffing and puffing. African cycling encountered this problem in the form of a Philip Gourevitch New Yorker essay entitled 'Climbers'. It's a Rocky-ish redemptive yarn about an accused child molester who ends up coaching the Rwandan national cycling team, the members of whom are traumatised by memories of the genocide. Can Tutsis reconcile with Hutus? Can coach come...

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