Nathan Byukusenge will compete for Rwanda in their first participation at the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships on Saturday, September 5. As one of the original members of Team Rwanda in 2007, the 35-year-old rider is motivated to produce a good performance in Andorra, hoping for a spot at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
"People still think about genocide when you say Rwanda," Byukusenge said in an interview published on the UCI website. "I want them to think cycling and what cycling means to our country and how it is changing our country and people within Team Rwanda."
Byukusenge was one of several original members of the team who was affected by the genocide in 1994. Team Rwanda's foundation was chronicled in the 2012 documentary, Rising from the Ashes, as American cycling legend Jock Boyer helped prepare the team prior to the 2012 London Olympics.
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At 35, other pro cyclists might considering retiring from the sport but Byukusenge believes he is far from done with his professional career. Living near the team's base at the African Rising Cycling Centre, he trains at 2000 metres in altitude in the northern Musanze district of Rwanda.
"I am not a young man in the sport but to make the Olympics at 35 shows, that if you train and eat right, you can ride competitively for a long time," he said.
Byukusenge looks to Swiss rider Thomas Frischknecht for inspiration, a former UCI World Champion known as Europe's "older statesmen," due to his long professional career. "He is still very strong and a great mountain bike cyclist. Because I am older, I see I can have a future in the sport like Thomas. I rode his old World Cup bike at the Cape Epic in 2012."
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