Already couple of days ago the riders had the opportunity to get used to the conditions in Massawa at the one day race Massawa – GP. Now, after a climbing stage one day before, the riders came back to the city at Eritrea’s coast line with its nice buildings and the traditional harbor. And what they had in the bag was the heat again!
172 Kilometers the riders had to go at this day, partly through desert roads and again expecting lots of attacks from the Eritrean riders. It is always astonishing what motivation and courage those guys bring in the race to present themselves to the european teams and show their abilities and strengths as they all follow one dream: become Procyclist in Europe!
Ok, it is easy to think that this is the dream of every rider also here in Europe, but: the reality and deeper meaning of this, you can only get after the 2nd look and if you think a little bit behind the scenes. Given the fact, that f.e. Eritrea is one of the poorest countries in the world – when you consider the average income of approximately 450 USD per year (as most of African countries) –you can start to understand that when they make it to a rider in the pro – peloton, they will immediately increase their opportunity to gain enough money to maintain their life and future. But it’s not only 1 person who benefits from that, in this case, the money they earn, will give them the opportunity to let the whole family benefit from this! And this is a much deeper and bigger sense as we all can imagine here in Europe, where most of us have access to all what we need to keep our daily life running!
This motivation is the engine for those young guys to do every day all these numerous and never ending attacks, that hurt so much, as they are so strong athletes. But on stage 4 Team Stradalli – BIKE AID managed again to keep the bunch together for a long time unitl the decisive group went away. But with 3 riders from the German team in it! And at the end it was again Mr. Sunhsine (Meron Amanuel) who proofed his great shape with 2nd place at the stage and taking over the lead in points classification. Meron Teshome rounded the day up with his 4th place!
Again great performance from the whole team.
