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Tour of Eritrea 2008: Stage
winners By Essayas Fessahaye Next to Habte Weldesimon, 2004 second-best tour winner Yonas Mengestu is surprisingly shinning in the 2008 Tour of Eritrea latest edition that kicked off on Friday, 11th April. He is leading all contestants with 28 points after five stages. The EriTel rider has so far stood within the list of top 10 stage winners in four of the first five stages on the first phase of the tour. He was the winner of stage two on Saturday that headed to Barentu from Keren covering 146 km. It was then that he wore the blue jersey for his stage victory and the yellow jersey as an overall leader. From that day on he is seen fighting so hard in keeping his leadership and the yellow jersey. Yonas Mengestu stood 7th in stage one of Asmara-Keren, 1st in stage two of Keren-Barentu, 3rd in stage three of Barentu-Keren and 6th in stage four of Keren-Deckmhare. But he has failed to take a point in the fourth stage that went on Deckmhare-Segeneyti-Deckmhare-Kisad Ketsela-Asmara. In this five stage of the first phase, Abrham Belay (Debub) 20 pts, Merhawi G/hiwet (EriTel) 20 pts, Frekalsi Debesay (EriTel) 20 pts, Yonas Zeray (EriTel) 18 pts, Bereket Yemane (Asbeco) 14 pts, Aklilu Goitom (Asbeco) 14 pts, Solomon Habte (Gegante) 13 pts, Jani Tewolde (Asbeco) 13 pts and Awet Habtom (Adulis)12 pts are leading consecutively with an overall cumulative points. Yonas Mengestu’s 2004 best performance in such tour contest was a much bigger surprise. He came from nowhere to follow the then tour champion Habte Weldesimon on the last stage of the tour at Bahti Meskerem Square in Asmara. He was far from the list of top 10 leaders before the final stage. But all at a sudden, when the tour unwraps, Yonas amazingly jumped to second. His 2004’s cumulative point that made him climb on the podium for silver medal was only 27 points. This is one point lesser than his cumulative point at this time (which is 28 points) while the tour has another four stages to go. There is another point that makes Yonas Mengestu’s overall leadership in this particular tour edition more surprising. Just before four months, when the year 2007 was fading, Yonas Mengestu had almost no part in the Zoba Maekel fierce championship competition that was won by the magnificent rider Daniel Teclehaimanot. To be more specific, of all the stages of the competition, Yonas scored only two points when he stood 9th in the Massawa-Asmara route. At the end of the championship competition, he ranked lowly 24th overall beating only 4 scoring riders. Where did all the energy and talent that is excelling in Tour of Eritrea 2008 came from then? Today, 16th April 2008 the tour is taking rest and will resume its second phase routes starting tomorrow. In this phase, Responsibility Relations Head of CC and NF Domenica Raymond from UCI (Union Cycling International) will witness Tour of Eritrea. This is expected to help acknowledge the standard of the national tour competition as an international race recognized under the rules and regulations of the UCI.
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©2007 EastAfro / Asmarino5
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