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Tour will have to embrace diversity

We gape as they snake up and up, the chocolate box backdrop not breathtaking because they have none to spare.

Then we peer through fingers as they plunge downhill like mortality was an unproven theory.

But what we couldn’t do this past fortnight was assume the riders on Le Tour are the finest cycling talents in the world. Not while the peloton rainbow includes just a single black face.

The one black man involved — Yohann Gène of Europcar — was also there last year when he gave the race its first ever splash of colour. Gène is from Guadeloupe so not a single black African has ever taken part. With East African dominance of endurance running almost total, you imagine they can spare a few men to cycle uphill.

Some are. In Iten, Kenya, where Corkman Brother Colm O’Connell has trained so many champion runners, a nearby project called Kenyan Riders is targeting the 2016 Tour. Some say Eritrea’s talent pool is deeper, with Daniel Teklehaymanot at Australian team GreenEdge. Adrien Niyonshuti’s mountain bike qualification for London is a breakthrough for Rwanda. Ethiopian Tsgabu Grmay is another prospect.

But facilities and funds are limited in these places and the Tour hasn’t exactly been welcoming in the past — Gène has fought racism to get his chance.

But things change. Of course, we can’t assume advantages. Life at altitude apart, there’s nothing to suggest the Kenyans get help from physiology. Mental toughness and an air of invincibility may be their greatest asset on the track and road.

A comparable culture of cycling will take time, but soon you suspect the Tour will have to embrace diversity. That will only enhance its credibility.

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