Magda Nieuwoudt won the elite women’s road race at the 2026 African Road Cycling Championships, covering the 122.2 km in 3:28:50 after riding alone from an early break to finish 5 minutes and 52 seconds clear of her compatriot Lisa Bone.
It was only her second UCI road race.
Nieuwoudt is 36, a professional triathlete and sports scientist who races IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 for a living and coaches out of her own club. She came to Kenya with an endurance engine built over years of long-course racing and used it the way triathletes use it, alone and against the clock.
Magda Nieuwoudt’s Ride At The African Road Cycling Championships
She went up the road early. Nobody came with her, and nobody came after her.
Behind the leader the race broke up rather than regrouped. Bone, who has just signed with the EF Education–Oatly Women’s WorldTour team, rode across to second on her own, and Tiffany Keep of DAS Hutchinson sprinted out of a chasing group for third.
That gave South Africa all three medals in Africa’s biggest women’s one-day race.
Nieuwoudt pointed afterwards to the depth of the South African squad rather than to her own ride, and she had a point. Five South Africans finished inside the top ten.
A Full South African Podium In The Women’s Road Race
🥇 Magda Nieuwoudt
🥈 Lisa Bone
🥉 Tiffany Keep
The under-23 classification was decided inside the same race, and South Africa took the top two places there as well. Marzaan Mellett won the continental under-23 title with Megan Botha second, and Ethiopia’s Tsige Kiros third.
Mellett had already finished second in the under-23 women’s time trial earlier in the week, in a discipline Rwanda dominated.
Callum Ormiston Attacks Off The Mutet Descent
The men’s elite road race the following day went the same way, to a South African riding alone.
Callum Ormiston attacked on the descent off the Mutet climb and held the gap all the way to the line, winning the 153 km race in 3:44:02 at an average of 40.98 km/h from a field of 128 starters.
Morocco’s Driss El Alouani took silver at 20 seconds, with Eritrea’s Hebron Berhane third at 34 seconds. Defending champion Merhawi Kudus of Eritrea came home sixth.
Ormiston, who rides for the UCI Continental team Joyrun & Hurricane, had crashed inside the final kilometres of an earlier attempt at this title. This time he had nobody near him.
Senegal’s Neriah Meunier Sow finished fifth overall and won the under-23 title, the country’s first African Championships gold in the discipline.
Five Titles And Thirteen Medals For South Africa
The week started with the mixed team relay, and so did the gold medals.
South Africa won the 40.8 km relay in 56:04.380, ahead of defending champions Mauritius on 56:17.278 and Rwanda on 56:30.130. The men set the pace before handing over to the women, and Lucy Young described it afterwards as the first team time trial effort the squad had put together in three years.
Magda Nieuwoudt credited Kenyan ugali for fuelling the win, according to the Standard.
The relay six were Gustav Basson, Joshua Dike, Ryno Schutte, Lucy Young, Lisa Bone and Magda Nieuwoudt.
The junior women’s road race over 68.8 km went to Madison Bateson, a road and mountain bike rider out of the Ballito area who is also the 2026 South African junior road champion. She is 2026 African champion now too.
The time trials on the opening day filled in the rest of the medal column. Young took bronze in the elite women’s test over 20.4 km in 31:26.124, 23 seconds down on Rwanda’s Diane Ingabire.
Dike and Schutte finished second and third in the men’s under-23 time trial behind Eritrea’s Yafiet Mulugeta, and Henro van der Walt took silver in the junior men’s time trial behind Mauritius’s Tristan Hardy.
Added up across the five days in Kisumu, on the shores of Lake Victoria, that is five gold, five silver and three bronze. Thirteen medals, and the top of the table.
The five titles came in the mixed relay, the junior women’s road race, the elite women’s road race, the under-23 women’s road race and the elite men’s road race. Rwanda finished second on the medal table and Mauritius third.
Thirty-two African countries entered, the host nation’s only medal was Mercy Eragae’s bronze in the junior women’s road race, and the championship leaves Kenya having been raced there three years running.
