The Man Who Made Froome

David Kinjah INTERVIEW KINJAH THE MAN WHO MADE FROOME A mentor to generations of Kenyans, meet David Kinjah, the cycling godfather who taught Chris Froome to ride WORDS JOSEPH DELVES PHOTOGRAPHY JEROEN VAN LOON 32 ■ BikesEtc August 2017 August 2017 BikesEtc ■ 33 David Kinjah INTERVIEW t’s 2013. In the shade of a room crowded with innumerable bicycle parts, trophies, cycling magazines and soft toys, a gaggle of boys lean in to get a closer view of the rider on screen. The small satellite TV is a new addition. Bought the previous year by their coach David Kinjah, its purchase was something of an extravagance, although it’s about to prove a good investment. The focus of their attention is one of Kinjah’s former pupils and, like them, a member of the Safari Simbaz team. IMeaning ‘wandering lions’, both he and the boys watching learnt to ride a bike while bunking at the compound up in the highlands north of Nairobi. Over 4,000 miles away, the rider on screen is about to win the Tour de France. Chris Froome might hold a British passport but he was born and first rode a bike in Kenya. The man who taught him how is David Kinjah. The first black African rider to sign for a European pro team, in a country more readily associated with distance running, the road that led Kinjah to racing bikes and becoming the one-time coach and mentor of the world’s most famous cyclist is a long one. Having left school at a young age, like most Kenyans, Kinjah dreamed of becoming a footballer. ‘Kenya is really a footballing nation with a running problem,’ Kinjah explained when BikesEtc caught up with him ahead of this year’s Tour. ‘But the beach where I played was a long way away, so I would run there,’ Kinjah recalls. ‘It was about 34 kilometres every day, and I was starting to turn into a runner by accident. Luckily, my friend’s dad had a bike that we used to learn to ride, and then I found a BMX in a junk shop and started riding that to the beach. On the way, I would get in little races with the people I’d see each day, so I started trying to make my ‘THE OTHER RIDERS bike faster by putting on lower handlebars and a big seatpost made out of an old pipe.’ With his newly improved ‘super bike’ Kinjah STARTED CHASING started going out riding by himself. Unlike some other parts of Africa that had been colonised by ME. I DIDN’T France, at the time there wasn’t much in the way of cycling culture in Kenya. WANT TO BE THEIR ‘There was one bunch of guys I saw around who were proper cyclists. They wore Lycra and funny PUNCHING BAG AGAIN, SO I KEPT PEDALLING!’ helmets. One day I started following them. They I got dropped,’ says Kinjah. ‘By the top I was pretty tutelage, and one, a man called Sabri Mohammed David Kinjah leads the pack through must have been having an easy day because I kept up angry. I thought these guys have invited me along even found a spare bike so that he could fix it and Kenya’s rough highland roads, where with them for a long time. Eventually, one of them to use as a punching bag.’ start training properly. mountain bikes with fat tyres are often asked me what are you doing on this funny bike?’ But when the riders regrouped they told Kinjah ‘I thought, “These guys aren’t so bad after all!” a better bet than road bikes – but the racing is still highly competitive Curious about the young rider on his strange bike, they were impressed with his riding. Despite this, Mohammad taught Kinjah to fix bikes, and soon the cyclists invited Kinjah on one of their rides high the youngster didn’t think he’d keep up on the next he was riding with a club. Increasingly obsessed with up into the mountains. Much of Kenya sits at high climb and told them to go on ahead. cycling, by 1999 Kinjah was accomplished enough to altitude and theory has it that this is the likely cause ‘A bit further along, I saw their bikes lined up by start racing abroad with a Kenyan amateur team, and behind its incredible number of endurance runners. a roadside kiosk. They were there having chai [tea] having ridden well at the Tour of the Seychelles was Although Kinjah lived near the coast at sea level, as and mandazi cakes. I didn’t stop because I had no invited by the head of the UCI to try to qualify for the soon as you move inland from where he lived at the money, but when they saw me pass they finished following year’s World Championships. Having time, the hills rise quickly upwards. their tea quick and started chasing me. I didn’t want gained a wildcard entry, and without much support The route the riders would take climbed through to be their punching bag again so I kept pedalling. forthcoming from his own national federation, the the towns of Mazeras and Mariakani, then around When I got over the hills to Kaloleni, I could only see French team loaned him a time-trial bike to compete to Kaloleni at around 200m altitude. one rider following!’ on. The following year, Italian squad Index–Alexia ‘On the very first hill they started attacking and The riders quickly took Kinjah under their offered Kinjah a contract to ride alongside Giro 34 ■ BikesEtc August 2017 August 2017 BikesEtc ■ 35 INTERVIEW David Kinjah Simbaz compound was something of a surprise. ‘I first met Chris Froome through his mother when he was 11. She was divorced and looking for someone to take care of him while she worked as a physiotherapist. Chris’ older brothers were back in the UK at university. So Chris was left behind. He was really a mama’s boy and he seemed kind of lonely. They lived in a rich person’s area, but were staying in servant’s quarters. All the other kids he knew were in better schools, so he was by himself a lot. He’d come by the compound on his little BMX. His main friend was his bicycle.’ Despite Froome’s shy disposition and the initial curiosity of the other kids he quickly appeared to feel at home at the compound. ‘There were no white people coming to the village. So to see Chris was quite weird at first. Suddenly there’s this kid who comes every day when the schools are closed and hangs around. There were no other Mzungu kids there, but he didn’t seem to care.’ In fact, despite being the only white kid to ride ‘I FIRST MET FROOME WHEN HE WAS 11. HE’D COME BY THE COMPOUND ON HIS LITTLE BMX. HIS MAIN FRIEND WAS HIS BICYCLE’ with the Simbaz, in most respects the young Chris Froome didn’t stand out much at all. ‘He knew nothing about racing, he was just like any other kid. Everything was interesting to him. He wanted to learn how to fix his bike, he wanted to come on longer rides with us. Then he started asking to come to races. He was focused from the beginning but he wasn’t a strong rider. He was young, he was skinny, he was shy. We didn’t take him seriously. But upstairs he was very disciplined.’ The young Froome started spending much of his free time at Kinjah’s ad-hoc academy. Known as ‘the straight one’ for his beanpole physique, he started competing in the boys’ races where riders on heavy Dutch bikes and battered BMXs rode alongside those Bikes and cycling kit are expensive, d’Italia winner Paolo Savoldelli for the 2002 season. lucky enough to own, or have begged, a proper racing which is why Kinjah still uses the The move would make him the first black African to bike. With so many youngsters riding and racing, relatively cheap footballs to teach ride at such an elite level. Sadly, the team collapsed Kinjah’s compound quickly became the centre of Kenyan youngsters the importance in 2003, leaving Kinjah to eke out a living riding at the Kenyan cycling scene. of teamwork and physical fitness smaller races in Belgium and the Netherlands. Still, Kenya at the time wasn’t necessarily the idyll In the following years, Kinjah regularly competed it appeared. Prolonged poverty, increasing ethnic at the Commonwealth Games, and at mountain bike tensions and the al-Qaeda bombing of the US races. He also threw more of his energy into running Embassy in Nairobi in 1998, meant that cycling the Safari Simbaz project (see safarisimbaz.com) around the countryside and townships was a which he’d set up in 1998. Echoing the support given potentially risky undertaking, particularly for to Kinjah by the riders who’d taken him on that first a 14-year-old white boy. ride in the mountains, the Simbaz were a loose group Having graduated from Banda School in Nairobi, of local kids who Kinjah looked out for and taught to and with the family’s fortunes looking up, the ride and fix bikes at his home outside Nairobi. 15-year-old Froome moved to South Africa to further In Swahili, ‘Mzungu’ roughly means ‘aimless his education. At the late age of 17, he finally got his wanderer’. Originally applied to early European own road bike.

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