The municipality of Quelimane is preparing the first trip to Mozambique by bicycle

The Mozambican municipality of Quelimane, internationally recognized as the first African sports city, is preparing to organize the first cycling tour in Mozambique in 2024, the mayor announced this Thursday to Lusé.

“This will be another historic milestone,” said Manuel de Araujo, president of the municipality of Quelimane, capital of the province of Zambezia, central Mozambique, ensuring that the initiative, which falls within the framework of the African Sports City, will be awarded the title when the initiative debuts in this Mozambican city it is being promoted with the support of the Secretary of State for Sports.

The mayor added that a group coordinated by the municipality has already been created to carry out the event, which will also propose a calendar and procedure for the event, with the municipality being the “organizing organization and initiator of the project.” .

“We are going to introduce a cycling tour of Mozambique, which will become a national event. This will be the first, we have never had anything like this before,” assured Manuel de Araujo in an interview with Lusa.

The municipality has been known as the cycling capital of Mozambique for several years now, and on December 7 in Brussels the mayor received the title of “African Sports City 2024” from the Association of European Sports Cities (ACES Europe).

For the first time, an organization based in Brussels, supported by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, its acronym in English) and managing these applications at a global level to promote and encourage sports, it awards this title to an African city, in this case in Mozambique, with a population of about 350 thousand people.

Throughout the year, Quelimane will highlight a sport each month, a program that began with athletics in January and cycling in February, when the idea of ​​cycling around Mozambique came up.

March is dedicated to boxing and has already allowed Quelimane to hold the first competition in this form “in about 60 years.”

It was a national boxing championship that, until last Saturday, brought 150 athletes from nine provinces to the Zambezian capital. “It was a shot in the dark.

But fortunately it was a lucky shot because it was one of the best competitions in the last ten years in Mozambique, both in terms of the national boxing championship and in terms of turnout,” assured Manuel de Araújo, recalling that it was also the first boxing championship held in Mozambique in four years after a break caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The number of athletes and the results we have achieved means that, in the end, Mozambique has a say in African boxing,” he also said. As an example, he cites the province itself, which does not have a single boxing ring, but mobilized athletes and thousands of people to watch the competitions.

“We are now thinking if we can buy some skating rinks, let’s put them in the neighborhood to make the sport more popular,” he explained.

The 2024 African City of Sports will feature a variety of events in the coming months, leading up to the conclusion of the national chess championship in Quelimane in December.

Meanwhile, two months later, Manuel de Araujo already guarantees that the results of the first African Sports City are positive: “Extremely positive results.

Quelimane has finally become the sports capital of Africa. We have several competitions and the public is already used to it, they are already asking for more from us.”