Casually ignorant, I asked him how he did.
In the beer line later, I found myself chatting with a fellow racer. I was one of them, fighting to a 211th-place finish among men. More than 1,100 riders lined up for the race on a cool, cloudless late-summer day. When he launched Team Amani in 2018, his goal was to empower East African cyclists, both male and female, as they vie for dominance in gravel and mountain bike racing.įrom left: Team Amani riders John Kariuki, Kenneth Mungai, and Geoffrey Langat. He pushed to attain better prize money for African riders at races-and grew leery of elite road racing, in which riders climb the ranks via an arcane points system that awards them for competing in races that are almost invariably held in Europe. He coordinated a Black Mamba racing series. Meanwhile, as Sule married and started a family, he tried to grow bike culture in East Africa. He taught himself English, zeroing in on one new word a day: “exertion,” for example, and “exhaustion.” He raced in China, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia.
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In 2016, a pro team, Kenyan Riders, recruited him. He stepped up his training until he was often doing 150-mile rides, and he started to race. Then in 2007, Sule pieced together a road bike. He took his grandfather’s bike and put a seat on the back, to transport paying customers around Eldoret. He worked in a print shop and a convenience store. From his grandfather, Sule got a sense of what a happy, stable life looked like, and he wanted to create something similar for himself. He was old by the time Sule was a teen and would get around slowly on a black upright singlespeed bicycle-a Black Mamba, as such workhorses are called in East Africa. His grandfather had been a janitor the steady work had granted him financial security. Kang-Chun Cheng and Adrian MorrisĮvery few days, Sule would visit his grandparents. Sometimes he had a mattress sometimes his mattress got stolen.įrom left: Team Amani riders Evan Wangai, Nancy Akinyi, and Salim Kipkemboi. School wasn’t an option-he couldn’t afford the tuition-and Kapsuswa was in the process of being demolished on account of crime, which forced Sule to couch surf, moving from the home of one alcoholic uncle to another.
Join Bicycling for unlimited access to best-in-class storytelling, exhaustive gear reviews, and expert training advice that will make you a better cyclist. He was old enough to find work, the thinking went, old enough to contribute financially to the family. His sister went to live with their grandparents while he stayed behind in Kapsuswa, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Eldoret. He’d had an inauspicious early childhood neither of his parents were a meaningful presence in his life after age 11. Sule was a visionary and a leader in African cycling. The team’s founder and captain, Sule Kangangi, will not be in Kansas. There will be a gaping hole in the Amani lineup, though. Kenya-based Team Amani has sent John Kariuki, a 26-year-old Kenyan, along with two Ugandan teammates, Charles Kagimu, 24, and Jordan Schleck, 20, to face off against the world’s top gravel racers on the 200-mile course. Unbound Gravel takes riders through the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas, along winding prairie roads littered with sharp rocks and steep climbs. This weekend, for the first time ever, a trio of African pros will line up for gravel’s most prestigious, most intensely fought race.
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