David Kinjah, inspiring Kenyan youth and Chris Froome

What kind of saddo does interviews on vacation? But then again, what kind of sports journo would ignore, even on vacation, the opportunity to meet the first coach of four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome? And discover instead an athlete of unique achievement with a world view like few in the business.

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Who won’t mark Froome’s success as his achievement and was once quoted as saying, “Kenya is really a footballing nation with a running problem.”

David Kinjah Kibachia, a proud Kenyan, says their runners, that wave of long distance talent belong fundamentally “from a few regions. And everybody else in Kenya does everything else in sport.” We are in Kikuyu, 25km outside Nairobi, 7000ft above sea level, higher than Nairobi where the biting winter night will hit us soon. Kinjah’s arrived after a 200km-plus ride, his home is close by and he’s got time to chat.

Well before Froome’s achievements rediscovered him, Kinjah was the first black cyclist from Africa to sign a professional contract in Europe. His early professional years coincided with the chaotic arrival of a new currency, the Euro, when cycling teams collapsed, merged and were created again. Being the rare black face in a white-dominated Euro-centric sport got Kinjah attention and speed and skills generated both invites to races and sponsorship contracts.

Kinjah competed in the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games, the 1999 All Africa Games, the 2000 world cycling championships in France, the mad 14-day Crocodile Trophy in Australia (world's biggest mountain bike race at the time) and the inaugural Cape Epics in South Africa, among other races. This for someone who sat on his first bike at 18, took cycling seriously at 22 to begin racing at 23. Being linked to Froome is an attention-magnet in itself but what makes Kinjah that rarest of elite athletes is what he started and what he continues to do of his time in sport.

Remember that cliché - ‘I want to give back to my sport when I retire’? Only four years into pro cycling, Kinjah, 27, set up Safari Simbaz, a community project in 1999, which two decades later is poised to go countrywide. While working on his bikes in the evening, he noticed young boys hanging around. “I won races, was on TV, was known but those kids were too shy, they would just observe. I started feeling guilty. That I should do something - maybe give them the bike to ride around.”

From his race winnings, Kinjah bought a few children’s bikes. On evenings at home, he would draw a big figure of eight on the ground and teach the neighbourhood kids how to follow the shape. “That’s how it started.” The evening class was to become a camp in his own home – first one room, then two, then the entire plot. The Safari Simbaz became part residential, always free, with kids fed meals. The idea was to use the bike and cycling to teach life lessons and impart skills for local boys to work with.

Twenty years on, “A boy in the camp learns how to be disciplined, how to be clean, take care of his bike, fix it plus training and fitness. You are there because of the bicycle, but life is not around the bicycle, we teach them how to be sustainable.” When they turn 18, the boys are taught how to open and operate a bank account and handle savings. More than 300 boys have come through the Simbaz in its 22 years and enter adulthood with some direction. Whether it is to win races and support their families, open their own bicycle shops or run a boda-boda (Kenya’s motorcycle taxis).

Kenya’s best mountain biker Kennneth Karaya has been in Simbaz for 12 years. Currently, Simbaz also houses Jordan Schleck Ssekanwagi, Uganda’s road and mountain biking champ. But their focus is not about race wins. “It is not to make Tour de France champions. We want to make community champions through the power of the bicycle.”

Kinjah ran the project off his race earnings for almost a decade before the setting up of the Safari Simbaz Trust in 2008. He is financially committed, also supporting the Safari Simbaz football team while on away tours during their local leagues matches or sometimes buying footballs. Pro-football, in fact, was Kinjah’s dream growing up in Mombasa and he bought the cheapest cycle available – a child’s BMX – to quickly get to practice and matches. The bike was modified with refitted tyres and pipes into a bizarre hybrid called Rungu (club) by friends. Because Rungu could hammer every other racer on the road. From Rungu to professional successes as black Africa’s first world class cyclist would have been enough for most athletes’ career track.

His role in the life of Froome makes for a handy addition. Froome was brought to Kinjah and the Simbaz by his mother, dealing with her divorce, just for “a few lessons”. She wanted to ensure that her shy, quiet son who cycled to school, could take care of himself on the road and know how to fix a flat tyre. It became a precious two-year after-school apprentice for Froome.

Kinjah laughs, “He was skinny, he was very hard working, kept pushing. At first he didn’t fit in. A white kid coming to us was like… you know, you’re supposed to be rich, big education, big cars. He didn’t care, what we ate he wanted to eat, what we did he wanted to do.” Later, during vacations from his South African boarding school, Froome would head to Simbaz and strategise with Kinjah on his upcoming races–road, time trial, mountain. The wins started to stack up, Froome’s reputation grew and Kinjah’s role was always acknowledged.

But no matter how the world sees it, Froome is not part of Kinjah’s greatest achievement. That, he says, lies in his “breaking through and staying there". To come “out of a non-cycling family, become the best rider in the country, to remain in racing". The first African to make a career out of professional cycling, still on the road at 51, younger men ahead and behind. His beloved Simbaz now owns a 5acre plot near Mount Kenya to build its HQ. A national academy with 10 feeder branches, scouting talent while working in communities around Kenya.

Next, there’s fund-raising to be done for the 100,000 pounds to start construction and a Simbaz girls project. Froome has promised to help. To think that everything began by drawing the figure 8 in the dirt. By someone who was not a multi-millionaire, uber-branded celebrity athlete with deep pockets. Just a man with a heart the size of his world. We’ve been talking for an hour, there’s vapour coming out of mouths, it must be 10degrees. Kinjah laughs, “The stories have kept us warm.” They so have.

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