Tennent earns first pro victory

South African James Tennent (MTN-Qhubeka) won the Tour of Rwanda's penultimate stage on Friday over a very hilly 152.9km course. Tennent outsprinted his breakaway companion Msgena Kindeya (Ethiopia National Team) to notch his first professional victory.

Tennent was in front of the race since kilometer 16 when he followed Rwandan Emmanuel Rudahunga to protect the positions on general classification of his Team MTN Qhubeka leaders Adrian Niyunshuti and Dylan Girdlestone.

Caught by the leaders at kilometer 110, Tennent hung on over the long climbs of the parcours and attacked again with Kindeya 18 kilometers from the finish.

This is the first victory this year for the 22-year-old neo-professional, who raced last season with Belgian team Fuji-Test Team and had finished as most aggressive rider at the Vuelta Leon, Spain. "It was a really hard parcours and I am very happy with this victory", Tennent told Cyclingnews, while his contract for 2012 is still not secured.

Team Type 1-Sanofi continues to hold the leader's yellow jersey with Kiel Reijnen supplanting teammate Joey Rosskopf as the general classification leader. Reijnen, the winner of four stages at the Tour of Rwanda, counter-attacked with four kilometers to go, at the foot of last ascent, "to put time into his rivals", he said. Reijnen has a two-second advantage to Rosskopf and 30 seconds to Girdlestone.

"Most important is that the team wins overall after last stage tomorrow, [if it's] Joey or me it doesn't matter", Reijnen said.

The final stage, from KIrongo to Kigali, is one of the hardest of the race, with 2,831m elevation over the 131.1km route.

National hero Nyunshuti is 6th overall and, if final overall success seems too hard to capture, he will look to notch up the stage win at the top of the small summit finish.