Billed as ‘West Africa’s noisiest bike race’ the Fundsmith Tour de Lunsar punches above its weight when it comes to international recognition, particularly considering its shoestring budget.
Two years ago, writing in The New Times, Rwandan journalist Peter Kamasa reported that the 2023 Tour of Rwanda was slated to cost 1.4 billion Rwandan francs, just shy of one million US dollars at today’s exchange rate.
The 2025 edition of Lunsar was organised for less than fifty grand.
Unlike the Tour of Rwanda, or other leading West African races like the Tours du Faso and Benin, Lunsar has no status in the UCI classification system.
While for many that 2.2 badge of approval is what lends a bike race legitimacy, there’s another argument to say that becoming ‘official’ with the UCI would crush what makes the Tour de Lunsar so easy to love.
A problem for the future, certainly. In the present, the Tour is proudly independent, even from the national cycling federation of Sierra Leone, which this year attempted to block the race from going ahead with a series of letters and legal injunctions.
Within the context of Sierra Leonean sport, Lunsar becomes the centre of the world for one week of every year. The National Sports Authority, the National Olympic Committee, and even the Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs send representatives.
It would needlessly tempt fate to suggest that the Tour de Lunsar is too big to fail. But it’s certainly large enough and loud enough that its absence would be massively missed if it were ever to go away. In fact, it would be devastating to the sport.
Did we do a good job with this story?