Doug Ryder says he nearly passed out when his cycling team got a wild card place at last year’s Tour de France.
But this July he will have all his wits about him as Team Dimension Data compete as a fully-fledged top division team, with realistic hopes of snagging stage wins and enjoying a spell in the leader’s yellow jersey, at the sport’s ultimate challenge.
Usually wildcards in the Tour make as much impact as a wildcard at Wimbledon. But last year MTN-Qhubeka (as they were known before a change in sponsor), were second, at a time, in the overall team classification. Daniel Teklehaimanot, one of the Eritreans in the team, wore the polka-dot jersey for several stages, as he became the first African to lead the mountain classification.
The team then trumped all of that by winning stage 14 on what Ryder calls “the Mandela Day stage”. The British journeyman Steve Cummings finished first on the anniversary of the former South African president’s birthday.
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No longer a novelty, Ryder and his African side will be every bit a legitimate part of the Tour, now elevated to the status of the UCI World Tour – the equivalent of playing in the English Premier League.
To develop the footballing analogy, the team have been promoted rapidly through the leagues. It was only in 2013 that they were granted a place on the international circuit.
And in doing so they have captured the attention of the sport globally, making headlines across the world for what has been seen as an over-achievement for a group of riders most outside of the sport had never heard of before.
It has been a dramatic rise for a team built by a little known South African cyclist who has gone from trying to balance his own career with a job in IT to now effectively being the chief executive of a multi-million-dollar business.
Last year the team were operating with a budget of around $6.5 million. Now they are “well north of that that,” says Ryder as he seeks to compete with the best by signing the likes of Mark Cavendish, Nathan Haas and Omar Fraile to his team. Top cycling outfits, like Team Sky, have operating budgets estimated around $28 million.
Ryder, an energetic and effervescent 44-year-old from Cape Town, rode for South Africa at the Atlanta Olympics and three World Road Race Championships but never enjoyed the pampered existence of a professional in a major race team.
“Pretty much everywhere we went we had to make things happen for ourselves,” he says of his racing days.
So he built his own team, way back in 1997, going through a series of different names as he solicited sponsorship from the likes of Lotus Development, Microsoft, Energade and MTN.
“It was only when MTN came on board as sponsors in 2007 that is when it really started to take off. We wanted to first be the best team in South Africa, then Africa and then to try and take on the world,” says Ryder in an interview with FORBES AFRICA.
“I always wanted to do something uniquely different, to show the ability of the African continent. When I was racing in the late 90s and early 2000s as a professional in Europe, I didn’t get that many opportunities, cycling was really hard then and lot was going on in the sport. It was a bit like racing motorbikes.”
“So I came back to South Africa and said ‘let me start my own team and believe in taking African cyclists as far as they can go’.”
By 2013, the small operation had advanced to 21 riders and 25 staff, 70% of them from Africa. Riders from South Africa were joined by professionals from Algeria, Eritrea and Rwanda. Now, as they ride on the bigger stages, it is full of some of the sports top stars – notably the sprinter Cavendish, whose annual salary is in the $4 million range. Signing him was a massive publicity coup, almost as big a statement as their exploits in the inaugural Tour de France.
“He’s probably the biggest name in the sport. He loves that we are partnered with Qhubeka and what we stand for. It has created an incredible buzz in the team.”
Five years ago, Ryder added Qhubeka to the team name, handing an international profile to a non-profit organization who give bicycles to people in return for community service.
“There is a perception about bicycles in Africa and riding them. Some people would rather walk than ride a bicycle because they feel it shows they cannot afford a car. We’ve tried to make bike riding cool. If the bicycle becomes a cool thing that people want to have, then maybe we can mobilize this continent forward. But we need heroes to do so. And that was the theory, the method in the madness to put this team together,” says Ryder.
The Tour de France offers a massive worldwide profile again but since January, Team Dimension Data have ridden in all the World Tour events, from Australia to Spain, then Dubai and Qatar, Oman, Malaysia, Belgium and Switzerland. In August, they will be in the Vuelta a Espana (the Tour of Spain) and ride in Canada and then the Netherlands before the year is out.
It is a remarkable story of persistence and dogged determination, as Ryder spent much of last year just negotiating and seeking to secure a myriad of sponsors to elevate his Johannesburg-registered team into a proper international concern.
He remains the driving force behind the team and the key element in the success they have had to date with his passion to see the team not just compete, an achievement of his own, but win stages and, ultimately, races.
Never has any sports outfit from Africa made such a dramatic rise.
Now Ryder is able to take more of a hands-on role, planning to manage the team on a daily basis as the look forward to an exciting future.

The Man Plotting How Africa Can Win The Tour De France

Do you remember the second man to land on the moon? How about the sprinter who was second behind Usain Bolt at the London 2012 Olympics? That’s what I thought. So last year when Christopher Froome came second behind Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France, the world took little notice. This year it all changed when he rode into the history books and became the first African-born cyclist to win the prestigious race in 110 years.
Place yourself on the back of Froome’s bike for a second. It’s the last stretch of one of the toughest cycling races in the world. You’re hemmed in by thousands of cheering fans who watch in awe as you zoom past. Any slight mistake can cost you the race. With one last push, you cross the finish line and are engulfed by the crowd. In the midst of the mobbish crowd you look up and see two familiar faces, fiancé Michelle Cound and former schoolmate Matthew Beckett.
“We were standing in the grandstand waiting for the finish just counting down to the three km mark. The entire last day is a procession and you’re never going to lose the tour on the last day… but until he passes the three km mark you can’t actually breathe that last sigh of relief…  [When he crossed the finish line] I gave him a big hug and had a bit of a cry,” says Beckett with tears in his eyes.
Since the Lance Armstrong doping scandal, which saw him stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life, the controls on the sport have tightened. These days riders carry blood passports and are required to log onto an internet site and state where they are for an hour every day. This allows for random doping tests. If a cyclist misses three tests they are banned from racing for two years. In the 23 days of the tour, Froome was tested 27 times and passed.
It was a cycling career born on the hard roads of Nairobi, Kenya, where a young Froome peddled for fun. Little did he know then that it would lead him to Paris.
Froome left Nairobi at the age of 14 when his parents relocated to Johannesburg, South Africa. He completed high school at the elite St Johns College, where he accelerated his passion for cycling by joining the schools club.  Alan Lion-Cachet, the school’s sports director, remembers Froome as a humble pupil who always had a smile on his face.
“He was spinning in the gym one day and some of his mates came into the gym, showered him with leaves and water, as if egging him on in the Tour de France, and chanted inspirational cries of ‘Go Chris go! You’re leading the TDF [Tour de France],” says Lion-Cachet.
Since 2008, thanks to his British passport, Froome has ridden under British license. In 2010, he joined Team Sky and has become one of their key riders. But things haven’t always been easy.
In 2006, twenty-year-old Froome rode for Kenya at the Road World Championships in Salzburg, Austria.
“He paid for himself to go. He was his own mechanic, own team manager, he was his own everything…” says Beckett.
Minutes into the race Froome crashed into an official, sending both men flying. He got back up, finished the race and learnt one of the greatest lessons in life: If first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and get back on your bike.
In seven years, life has changed beyond recognition. Now he has a manager, support team and his latest win earned him €450,000 ($596,000) and a brand new Jaguar V6 F-Type, worth £67,000 ($103,000).
Froome dedicated his win to his late mother, Jane, who died from cancer in 2008.
In an interview in Britain’s Daily Mail Froome said he hopes his win will inspire.
“I hope it sends a message to a lot of young Africans to inspire them to achieve their dreams even though it may seem very far away. If they want something badly enough then they can find a way to make it happen, as I did,” says Froome.
No one can say what went through Froome’s mind as he crossed the finish line in Paris. Though, you can be sure that film makers have it in mind. Imagine, on a dusty Kenyan road, a young boy peddles his bike, with a small sticker that reads Made in Britain. There is a South African flag on his left handle and a Kenyan flag on his right handle. As he stares out into the warm sunset he says: “One day I’m going to win the Tour de France”. Indeed, I feel an advertisement is in the air.

Tag: Tour de France

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The Man Plotting How Africa Can Win The Tour De France

Kenyan-Born South African-Raised British Claimed