On Friday 13 May 2016, Raouf Akanga won the 3rd stage of the 13th International Cycle Tour of Benin, covering a distance of 115km between Bohicon and Ouidah. The Togolese cyclist was followed by Emmanuel Innocent from Nigeria and Hamidou Yaméogo from Burkina Faso. This stage victory enabled him to take the yellow jersey.
Raouf Akanga wins stage 3 of the Tour du Bénin 2016
“Incredible but true! Victory on stage 3 and a new yellow jersey in the Tour Cycliste International du Bénin. A big thank you to my team-mates who were fantastic. Yes, that’s what a national team is all about. We’re a small team with very few resources, but with our determination we’ve done the impossible. Two more stages and now my objective is to fight to bring this jersey back to Togo”, declared Akanga Raouf, who had managed to hold on to the yellow jersey until the start of the 5th and final stage of the Tour of Benin, which took place on Sunday 15 May on a closed circuit in Cotonou.
“My bike was a bit old and the frame broke”.
At that moment, he was in a position to create an exploit by winning a cycling tour for Togo for the first time. Unfortunately, he was unable to do so because of the poor condition of his bike. Yet on this 5th and final stage, Raouf Akanga was determined to finally offer Togo its first podium finish. However, his bike broke down in the middle of the race due to a mechanical problem and a lack of spare bikes. “After I won the third stage and took the yellow jersey, my bike broke down on a cobbled stage. It was vibrating a lot and my bike was a bit old, so the frame gave way”, he explains.
The rider and his staff had borrowed the bike of a former Beninese rider to finish the Tour. But during the final stage, everything fell apart 12km from the finish, with a damaged chain on the bike.
“Our team no longer had a spare bike”.
Raouf Akanga had hoped in vain for one of his team-mates to help him out. Instead, he watched those he had overtaken pass him by before he got hold of his team-mate Fabio Anani’s bike. He finished 15th overall in the Tour.
“It really hurts when I think about what happened on the last stage. It’s true, I’m wearing the yellow jersey after my victory on stage 3, a yellow jersey that I defended on Saturday’s stage, a very tough stage with a large section on cobbles on which my bike broke. I had to finish the race on a team-mate’s bike. As we didn’t have a bike, we had to borrow that of a former Beninese rider with whom I had to finish the Tour”, he recalls.
And yet, before the start, Raouf Akanga was confident. “On Sunday morning, everything was OK for me to finish the lap in yellow. We had 20 laps of a circuit to complete and unfortunately, on the 4th lap from the end, the chain on my bike broke and it took me a long time to get to my team-mate Fabio Anani’s bike. After that, when I got back on the road, the peloton was already a long way off! I finished the race about 4 minutes late. That’s why I lost the yellow jersey and ended up in 15th place overall”, Raouf Akanga recalls with great bitterness.
Togo’s road champion in 2015 and 2022 won’t soon forget his misadventure: “It still hurts me to have lost the yellow jersey in Benin.
