National coach at the cycling federation, Hans du Toit has said the Namibia Cycling Federation (NCF) will use upcoming races to select riders who will represent Namibia in Birmingham at the Commonwealth Games.

Namibia’s cycling season will start this Sunday with the Nedbank Windhoek Pedal Power race series on the Döbra loops, while the Namibia National ITT and Road Cycling Championships will be held during the first week of February 2022.

In an interview with Nampa on Wednesday, at the launch of the Tour de Windhoek, Du Toit said 2022 is an exciting year for the federation as they are busy planning for the Commonwealth Games.

“Having events like the Tour de Windhoek during February, we are going to be able to select a team that will represent us at the Commonwealth Games,” he said.

Du Toit added that for a small country like Namibia it was a huge achievement to have four cyclists at the 2021 Olympic Games.

“Four cyclists in two different events at the Olympic Games was a massive accolade for the sport of cycling. As a sport, we are always looking at improving but unfortunately road cycling is very difficult in the southern parts of Africa because we are far from Europe where the main races take place, but we are improving all the time,” Du Toit said.

The cycling coach stated that Namibia needs to have more riders competing or riding for European teams.

“One of the biggest events in the country is the Tour de Windhoek which exposes our riders to better competitions from South African riders who bring tough competition, but we need more of our riders out there if we want to be competitive at competitions,” he said.

Du Toit also told this agency that the NCF has selected several mountain bike and road races that will be used to select five riders that will represent Namibia at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in July.

“At this stage, we have a total of five cyclists that will represent the country at the Commonwealth Games but the distribution of how many males or females, road or mountain bike will be determined by their performance in the selection races,” he said.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency