Biniam Girmay Became the First Black Cyclist to Win a Tour de France Stage

It was all summed up in the excited, booming Dutch voice of Intermarché-Wanty teammate Mike Teunissen as he grasped stage 3 winner Biniam Girmay by the shoulders: “You make history! You know—it’s for Africa, for Intermarché. We’re so proud of you!” Yes, Girmay had just become the first Black cyclist from Africa, indeed the first Black man from any continent, and also the first Intermarché rider, to win a stage of the Tour de France. And he did it with the utmost skill and speed, first losing the wheels of his lead-out train around the last two turns and then, doing what his boyhood hero Mark Cavendish does so well, freelanced his way along the leeside of the other sprinters before making a late, full-speed acceleration to win by a clean bike length.

It was the victory of a true pro, a win that would make any seasoned European sprinter proud, let alone a rider from Eritrea, where the average per capita income is less than $1,000 a year. Indeed, his has been a long, quite remarkable, against-all-odds story.

Girmay grew up in Asmara, a city of 1 million people, with four brothers and a sister. “We lived in a small but nice house,” he told me last year. “The best part [was] that we can play in the streets in Asmara, there are not that many cars. After school we could play football for hours.” Because of the empty streets and the temperate climate—Asmara sits at 2,325 meters,7,628 feet, above sea level—the city has been called a cyclist’s paradise. Also, during 50 years of colonial rule, Italians made cycling a popular sport. Today, Eritrea has 1,000 licensed bike racers and about 100 races a year.

Girmay said his father got him into the sport: “Every Sunday we have a race in Asmara. Mostly I went with my father to see the races. If there was a grand tour on television, we watch in coffee bars or sometimes we go to the cinema to watch the Tour de France.” Besides cycling, his father insisted that his son learn English at school—“he imagined that it was one way of succeeding later on [in life].”

As part of a large family, Girmay’s first bike was a hand-me-down; then his dad bought him an “expensive” bike. Sometimes, they’d ride the ten kilometers to his dad’s carpentry business. When still in the junior ranks, Girmay said, “I started out in mountain biking at age 13 for two years before going on the road. I quickly became the No. 1 junior in the country.” He was helped by Meron Teshome, a good friend, who was the African time trial champion in 2017. “We still train together,” Girmay told me. “sometimes we go for a mountain bike ride in the mountains around Asmara.”

On Girmay’s first trip out of Eritrea, in 2018, for the African junior championships in Rwanda, he won three gold medals: the road race, time trial and team time trial. “The UCI were interested in me right away,” he said, “and wanted me to go to the World Training Centre in Switzerland, where I went before the summer,” and where he perfected his English.

At one of his first European junior races, the Tour de la Vallée de la Trambouze in France, Girmay won the opening stage in a 20-strong uphill sprint. A week later, he won the opening stage of another junior race, Aubel–Thimister–Stavelot in Belgium, this time in a two-man breakaway ahead of another (very special) junior: Remco Evenepoel. In that first European foray, Girmay also took podium spots at races in Italy and Switzerland. Presciently, he said: “My dream is to one day start the Tour de France.”

Girmay was offered his first pro contract by the second-tier French team Delko Marseille after winning a Tour du Rwanda stage by out-sprinting Delko’s Rwandan, Joseph Areruya. Girmay went on to ride the 2019 Tour de l’Avenir. He was well down on GC but was fifth on the toughest alpine stage over the Col de la Croix de Fer to a mountaintop finish at Le Corbier. Recalling that under-23s stage race, Girmay said, “I remember the stages before—it was cold and rainy. The last stages, the weather was getting better, and I started to feel good. That’s why I tried to follow the GC guys in the last stage [and finished eight seconds ahead of overall race winner Tobias Foss]. I can’t say that I look forward to the mountain stages in the Tour de France, but I think the fans can help me get over the mountains.”

In 2020, at age 19, Girmay’s pro career began better than that of any previous Black cyclist from Africa, when he placed second in Italy’s Trofeo Laigueglia behind local standout Giulio Ciccone; he was also second at the Tour du Doubs and fourth at the Tour of Tuscany in that pandemic-shortened 2020 season. A year later, after transferring to the Intermarché team mid-season, he won his first European pro race, the hilly Classic Grand Besançon Doubs in eastern France, out-sprinting a five-man break that included Thibaut Pinot.

Three weeks (and five more races) after that outstanding victory, Girmay lined up for the 2021 under-23 worlds road race with 173 others. The 161-kilometer race was dominated by a strong Italian team that propelled Filippo Baroncini to the rainbow jersey; but just two seconds back it was Girmay who outkicked 32 others in the uphill sprint in Leuven to earn the silver medal—the first Black cyclist to podium at any world cycling championship. On his arrival back home, Girmay said, “I was proud to see all the former great champions come to congratulate me, notably Daniel Teklehaimanot and Natnael Berhane.”

Those Eritrean luminaries, along with thousands of fellow citizens, would again be out in the streets of Asmara in late March 2022 to welcome Girmay home after his unprecedented victory in Ghent–Wevelgem. Leading up to that spring classic, Girmay raced 23 times in two months, taking one victory (at January’s Majorca Challenge) and six top-ten results. His most significant result came in his first monument, Milan-San Remo. He followed the best on the closing climbs, the Cipressa and Poggio, and rode into the finish with a second chase group to take 12th place.

Six days later, Girmay rode his first cobbled race as a pro, the E3 Saxo Bank Classic…and seemed right at home. When Wout van Aert and teammate Christophe Laporte made their winning attack on the ultra-steep Paterberg, Girmay was on the point of joining them before fading near the top. But he stayed with the eight-man chase and took fifth on the line. Ghent–Wevelgem was two days later.

Van Aert raced like the No. 1 favorite that day, breaking clear on the day’s last climb, the cobbled Kemmelberg. After being joined by two chase groups, the Belgian champion moved to Plan B by sending Laporte on the attack. Girmay immediately jumped on the Frenchman’s wheel, followed by Belgian veterans Jasper Stuyven and Dries Van Gestel. Working together, the four stayed clear. Laporte was tipped to win, but Girmay showed his tactical nous by staying at the back, jumping clear with 300 meters left and holding off the pursuing Frenchman.

Girmay returned to Asmara to a hero’s welcome with a parade through a packed downtown: “Bini! Bini! Bini!” the crowds chanted. And there were family celebrations with his wife Saliem, baby daughter Leila—and his jubilant dad. Girmay’s month back home was also an altitude camp, given Asmara’s high elevation. In a typical training ride, he’d descend to the Red Sea at Massawa, “where you can ride in the wind before climbing back 70 kilometers to Asmara,” he said. “I train with six others, maybe even 20 at times.” He returned to Europe for the Giro d’Italia, riding Germany’s Eschborn–Frankfurt classic five days before starting his first three-week stage race.

It’s now part of cycling history that Girmay was the first Black cyclist to win a stage of a grand tour on stage 10 of the 2022 Giro—though many people better remember that, as he was celebrating that victory, the cork from the oversized bottle of Prosecco shot up into his left eye. “The cork hit me in the eye at very high speed,” he said, “so it could have been much worse. For 10 days I was afraid I was going to lose it…. It was of course hard to leave the Giro with an injury.”

At the time, Girmay was upset by reactions on the web: “They continued to laugh about the situation on social media, to the point of forgetting that I won a stage.” And it was a tough stage, 196 kilometers from Pescara to Jesi. Half a dozen climbs in the last 80 kilometers split the peloton, and a full-out GC battle on the final hill left just 30 riders to contest the finish.

“It was a hard stage, but thanks to my teammates I could stay in contact with the front group,” Girmay remembered. “And even the GC guys helped me to control the group…and Pozzo did a great lead out.” That would be the veteran Italian Domenico Pozzovivo, a climber, who put his teammate in great position for the slightly uphill sprint. It quickly became a two-man battle between Girmay and Mathieu van der Poel—just like that 2022 Giro’s opening stage on a hilltop finish in Hungary, where the Dutch superstar outkicked the grand tour debutant by a bike length. This time, in Jesi, Girmay made a perfect sprint to win by several lengths. On crossing the line, a beaten van der Poel showed respect for his rival with an unexpected thumbs-up.

Then came the podium and the Prosecco cork shooting into Girmay’s face. He graciously continued the ceremony, waving to the crowd while holding a hand over his injured eye, before going to the hospital to have the hemorrhage treated. Girmay even celebrated that night with his teammates, who toasted him with glasses of bubbly.

Bad luck again plagued Girmay’s 2023 season, starting on April 2, his 23rd birthday. Five hours into the Tour of Flanders, as the race approached the Molenberg with Girmay in the fast-moving group of favorites two minutes behind the early break, the birthday boy touched wheels with Matej Mohoric. They both hit the tarmac. Riders crashed into and over Girmay at high speed. With a concussion and extensive abrasions, his race was over…and his plans for a smooth transition toward his first Tour de France were scuttled.

“I have no memories from the crash or even the trip to the hospital,” Girmay said from his home in Eritrea. “The recovery from the concussion in the days after the crash was quite okay. However, I had many severe wounds, making the recovery process very long.” Indeed, his team’s communications chief Sarah Inghelbrecht, who saw him in the hospital, told me, “He had deep wounds everywhere on his body. He had stitches in the face. A nurse or our team doctors came every day to take care of his wounds…10 days just to be healed enough to go home, that’s quite a long time.”

After two months off the bike, returned to racing only three weeks before his debut Tour. He did win a stage of the Tour de Suisse—ahead of Arnaud Démare and Wout van Aert—but he started the Tour de France with less than perfect form. He did finish his first Tour, with best placings of third at Bordeaux (behind Jasper Philipsen and Cavendish) and sixth in Paris. He has had better fitness this year, starting with a victory at Australia’s Surf Coast Classic in January. He returned to the Giro, got third place on stage 3 (behind Tim Merlier and Jonathan Milan), but then crashed twice of greasy roads on the next stage, and was again forced to pull out of the race.

He returned to racing in late May and had a strong of good results, with second place at the Rund um Köln, victory at the Circuit Franco-Belge in an uphill finish, and another second place at the Brussels Cycling Classic. He returned to Eritrea for his national championships (his sixth place showed how the standards are improving there) and he stayed there for more altitude training on his favorite roads.

Girmay doesn’t have a home in Europe. “Biniam’s home is basically where the team is,” Inghelbrecht said. “Sometimes he stays in our family hotels in Belgium…or in Italy with his cycling friends in Lucca. He has a long-term visa, which requires him to leave the Schengen zone [27 European countries] every three months. If Biniam returns to Asmara frequently, it’s because he wants it.”

Asked about his family, Girmay said, “I know my wife already for a long time. She loves life in Asmara [with our daughter], so we don’t plan to move to Europe. We didn’t apply for a visa. But maybe they come one time, maybe not.” What is certain is that his family, along with thousands of Eritreans, are now celebrating his historic stage win at Turin in this 111th Tour de France. It’s been a long journey.