There was a second, over half an hour after Remco Evenepoel had crossed the road to win the Paris Olympics highway race, when the crowds within the stands at Trocadéro erupted into cheers.
Riders halted their post-race interviews, and seemed again over their shoulders within the media zone. Photographers, who had left their end line positions, swivelled on their ft, pointing their cameras again in direction of the Eiffel Tower. Some rose onto their tiptoes to try to see the supply of the commotion.
The roar, they rapidly found, had been for Charles Kagimu. The 25-year-old crossed the road alone in Paris, sporting shorts salty with sweat, and a white Uganda jersey. Of the 90 riders who began the race, Kagimu was the final one residence, over 4 minutes adrift of his nearest competitor, ending in 77th place.
He lifted his left hand from his bars, and saluted the lots as he rolled throughout the road. “They gave me a variety of motivation to complete this race,” he mentioned. “It was a extremely loopy environment.”
The Ugandan rode a lot of the city-centre ending circuit by himself. With a dedication to finish the race, he discovered himself willed on by the environment in Montmartre, Paris’s dainty vacationer district, which had been reworked right into a Flemish berg for the day, swollen six followers deep on the roadside.
“I used to be on the entrance for nearly 190km,” Kagimu mentioned, recalling the hours he had spent within the breakaway. “It was fairly good to get a head begin and likewise to journey a tempo that suited us very well. It is a pity that a few of the guys weren’t actually pushing on, however you already know, that is how biking is. In the long run, I am actually pleased that I managed to complete the race.”
Born within the capital metropolis of Kampala, Kagimu turned to biking ten years in the past as a way to commute to high school. “Then I discovered a number of guys who had been racing, and I joined them,” he recalled.
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The Ugandan now rides for a non-professional Dutch biking membership, Journey United, and gained his first occasion final 12 months within the African Continental Championships time trial. The Olympics highway race, at over 272km lengthy, and with 2,800m elevation, was one among his most tough so far.
“I believe it’s the longest highway race I’ve ever performed,” he mentioned. “The race was actually, actually lengthy.”
The afternoon was made more durable nonetheless by a bout of sickness he had been combating for the previous week. “After the opening ceremony, I used to be actually sick,” Kagimu mentioned. The Ugandan was his nation’s flagbearer on the boat throughout the Seine, a chance that had him bursting with pleasure, however standing within the rain for hours.
(Picture credit score: Getty Photographs)
“On Saturday, I actually could not get away from bed. We labored actually laborious to get round, however after such a illness actually near the race, for positive I misplaced so much,” he mentioned. Pulling out, nevertheless, was by no means an choice. “I needed to race,” he continued. “There was nothing else to do other than doing the race, and giving it my all.”
It was that perspective, that doggedness, that the crowds by Trocadéro observed in Kagimu as he got here throughout the road. It had taken him virtually seven hours to complete, however end he did, the one rider to take action from the early breakaway. “It is an enormous accomplishment,” the Ugandan mentioned. He then posed for {a photograph} and, using alongside the tribunes, started his journey again to his resort.
