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UCI hosts Afghan women’s championships in Switzerland

49 women set to compete in Aigle

Afghan Cycles

On Tuesday, the UCI announced that 49 athletes will compete in the Women’s Road Championships of Afghanistan taking place on October 23 in Aigle, Switzerland. Afghan women now living in Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany, Canada and Singapore, are on the start list for Sunday’s road race.

In a statement, the UCI said that among them will be Masomah Ali Zada, the first female Afghan cyclist to take part in the Olympic Games – as part of the refugee team created by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the Tokyo 2020 Games , who fled her country in 2017, under threat because she was cycling. In July this year, she was elected to the IOC Athletes’ Commission.

The participants also include Wahida Hussaini, one of the athletes welcomed by the UCI World Cycling Centre (WCC) in Aigle, Switzerland, who finished 11th in the individual time trial at this year’s Asian Cycling Championships in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Meanwhile Italy-based sisters Fariba and Yulduz Hashimi, two of four Afghans now riding for UCI Women’s Continental Team Valcar – Travel & Service, recently competed in the inaugural UCI Gravel World Championships.

The plight of women cyclists after Afghanistan’s fall

The course will be laps of a 28.5 km circuit with riding through the towns of Aigle, Yvorne, Rennaz and Vouvry, in the Chablais region of Vaud.

Two separate titles will be awarded: one for the riders in the Elite category, and the other for those in the u- 23 category. However, all the participants will start simultaneously and cover the same distance.

UCI WCC Director, and former Canadian national team rider, Jacques Landry said all the young women competing in Aigle were being well looked after in their respective host countries: “Quite apart from being given the opportunity to safely practice the sport they love, they are being integrated into their new lives, learning the language, finding their own accommodation, and many are already working or studying,” he said. “The goal is to make them independent and self-sufficient. The UCI WCC is delighted to welcome them to Aigle for their National Championships.”

In 2021, several evacuation operations were led either by the UCI or by its partners. A total of 165 Afghan citizens were able to leave their country, through groups like the NGO IsraAID, various governments, the Asian Cycling Confederation as well as Sylvan Adams,  the owner the UCI WorldTeam Israel Start-Up Nation.

Israel Start-Up Nation team owner organized mission to save 167 Afghan nationals

The evacuated Afghans settled in different countries now have the chance to reunite and celebrate their passion for cycling at the occasion of the Women’s Road Championships of Afghanistan taking place in Aigle on Sunday 23 October.

Some of the young women that were evacuated describe their story in the moving video below.