Biniam Girmay voted African cyclist of the year
Eritrean cyclist Biniam Girmay has seen his great 2022 season rewarded with the distinction of the African Cyclist of the Year award, a great recognition for one of the young promises of the peloton.
At the age of 22, Biniam Girmay wins this award for the third consecutive year, although this year he has done even more merit to receive it, since the Eritrean achieved his first classic during the last Ghent-Wevelgem and achieved another prestigious victory after winning the tenth stage to Mathieu Van del Poel. A victory that was marred by the cork that hit his eye during the podium and that made him abandon the race. Despite this, Girmay recovered to face the last months of the season at the end of sixth in the Bretagne Classic, third in the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec and second in the Wallonia Grand Prix.
Biniam Girmay has taken the award ahead of the South African Louis Meintjes, who in 2022 has also had the best season of his career, being third in the Giro de Sicilia, winning the Giro dell’Appennino, sixth overall in the Dauphiné and shining in the Tour de France, where he stayed at gates of victory in Alpe d’Huez and where he managed to finish in an outstanding seventh position overall. Meintjes closed his great year in La Vuelta, where he managed to win the Les Praeres stage and where he stayed at the gates of the Top-10 of the general to be eleventh. Another Eritrean completes the podium, Natnael Tesfatsion, who this season has won the Tour of Rwanda, in addition to having been second in the Giro dell’Appennino, protagonist in several breakaways of the Giro d’Italia and winner of a stage and second overall in the Adriatica Ionica Race.
