SNH shines Cameroon’s image at Côte d’Ivoire cycling tour.

The institution made the latest strides through its cycling team, the SNH Velo Club which recently dominated the 2024 Côte d’Ivoire International Cycling Tour.

The institution’s cycling team ended the tour with a clean sweep on podium of the seven-lap.  SNH Velo Club also dominated the overall performance to emerge best team of the competition. 

Kuere Rodrigue Nounawe, Clovis Kamzong Abossolo and Chofor Fabrice ranked first, second and third respectively. The SNH Velo Club members beat two of their equally performant teammates and 33 other cyclists in the course of the race.

The SNH outfit clinched the team award after smoothly shaking off threats from renown cycling teams from Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Sierra Leone and a host of other.

The performance has since been rated as not only an honor to Cameroon but a fresh statement about SNH’s status as a citizen-company.  It has been saluted for selflessly boosting the country’s sporting movement both domestically and internationally. 

This view, per observers, is owing to the fact that the recent successes recorded in Cote d’Ivoire follow similar strides made by SNH particularly in the domain of cycling. In this domain, SNH not only sponsors national competitions but inspires its cyclists to outstanding performances in major events globally. 

A historic all-SNH podium 

Cyclists of the SNH team recorded the recent victories in Côte d’Ivoire after a domineering performance across the seven stages of the 649km-long competition. It was organized from September 15 to September 21.

The overall winner did the race in 15 hours, 44 minutes and 51 seconds. The performance came after the cyclists put a brilliant performance throughout the race to notably hold the winner’s yellow jersey in three of the overall seven stages. 

Fabrice Chofor who put up a stellar show to surprisingly emerge as the winner of the race’s first lap, finished second on the final standing. He completed the event barely a second behind the overall winner. 

Kamzong Abossolo ranked third on the final classification. The skipper of the SNH club held the yellow jersey in three of the overall seven stages of the competition. He rounded up the campaign sitting just 59 seconds behind the champion Rodrigue Nounawe.

All-round team domination 

Besides the clean sweep on the podium, SNH recorded an all-round dominant performance in the 2024 Cote d’Ivoire competition.

The team’s two other cyclists that featured in the competition, 40-year-old Tella Artuce and Achetkuenyinyi Aurelien equally performed excellently.

Tella ranked fifth on the final classification while Achetkuenyinyi Aurelien, the team’s least performer, came 14th.

Tella later got a consolatory award after emerging as the winner of the Grand Prix Bouake, a ceremonial one-lap event held in the central part of the west African country last Sunday to officially close the 2024 international tour.

Historic win for Cameroon 

The 2024 Cote d’Ivoire tour goes down the books as the fourth time that a Cameroonian cyclist is emerging as the champion of the Côte d’Ivoire International Cycling Tour since the start of the competition over seven decades ago.

Nounawe, the overall winner, is the fourth Cameroonian to win the race since Lagarde in 1953 and Joseph Kono who won two successive editions in 1961 and 1962.

Overall, this is the first time since France in 1960 that all top-three cyclists of an edition of the competition are from a single country.

SNH enriching glistering legacy 

The recent big win in Côte d’Ivoire comes to shine more lights on what has already been a glistering legacy for SNH in terms of sporting excellence especially in the field of cycling.

The institution’s cycling team is in the books as the outfit that has produced all the Cameroonians that have emerged as champions of the Cameroon International Cycling Tour and the Chantal Biya International Cycling Tour. These are the biggest cycling competitions in the continent.

The structure’s widely popular cycling team has also produced the highest number of star cyclists that have made the nation proud in other cycling competitions internationally.

In terms of international events organized by Cameroon, the SNH Velo Club has offered Cameroon all four Cameroonian champions of the Chantal Biya International Cycling Tour. 

Flaubert Douanla set the pace in 2006 after winning the 2006 race. Martinien Tega who was the SNH club’s Sporting Director at the recent Cote d’Ivoire tour, won the race in 2010 before Yves Ngue Ngock took the relay to win two titles in 2011 and 2013. Kamzong Abossolo came out as the winner in 2017.

The SNH club has also produced all three Cameroonian winners of the Cameroon International Cycling Tour. Familiar name, Martinien Tega came out as the trailblazer in 2004 before Ngue Ngock took the relay to emerge as the winner in 2012. 

Kamzong Abossolo, considered the country’s finest cyclist of all time, took over the relay and won the 2015. He also won in 2021 and 2024 to enter the books as the most decorated Cameroonian cyclist of all time.

SNH making plausible strides in other major cycling events 

SNH’s cyclists have previously made Cameroon proud in major cycling competitions besides the Cote d’Ivoire tour where Kamzong Abossolo ranked second in the final standing in 2018 before Tella Artuce finished third in 2019.

Kamzong Abossolo took third position at the end of the 2023 Benin International Tour. 

In 2020, the same cyclist emerged as the winner of the fifth lap of the Gabon International Cycling Tour.  The victory had the Cameroonian becoming the first Central African cyclist to win a lap in the Gabonese tour known simply as the Tropicale Amisa Bongo. 

SNH’s sporting influence felt beyond on-field results

SNH’s influence in boosting the Cameroonian sporting movement and making the nation proud both domestically and internationally goes beyond the on-field successes that are consistently recorded by its athletes especially in the field of cyclists.

The institution is one of the biggest sponsors of the Cameroon International Cycling Tour and the Chantal Biya Cycling Tour.

The structure is credited for being one of the lead structures that have contributed in placing the two cycling events as one of the biggest sporting competitions in the world. 

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3239 of Tuesday September 24, 2024