On Sunday afternoon, after 120 kilometres of fast and intense racing, Joseph Areruya crossed the finish line of stage 7 of the Tour of Rwanda with the yellow jersey on his shoulders and his arms high in the air in the shadows of Kigali's Stade Amahoro.
Seven seconds after defending champion Valens Ndayisenga (Tirol) took the stage win, 21-year-old Areruya crossed the line with a celebration equal to Ndayisenga's. A week on from his fourth-place finish in a prologue that also started and finished at the Stade Amahoro, Areruya was back in the capital writing his name into the record books and claiming a fourth straight overall win for Rwanda at the UCI 2.2 race.
"Today was an amazing and great day. I had fear for this day but no more fear because I have the yellow jersey," Areruya told Cyclingnews while draped in the Rwandan national flag under the finish arch.
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For Areruya, the win was a triumph of his legs and head.
Having ridden away from the peloton on stage 1 to Huye, taking a convincing win and lead in the overall standings, stage 2 was riddled with "mistakes".
"All those mistakes that were made on that second stage, we had a really stern talk to the guys and a good meeting that night and the next day it brought the guys back together," sports director Andrew Smith told Cyclingnews of the stage into Rubavu where Areruya was pushed out of the yellow jersey by Illuminate's Simon Pellaud by a full minute.
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