HISTORY OF GHANA CYCLING ASSOCIATION

Cycling had been in existence in Ghana for a very long time. However ompetitive cycling was introduced into Ghana by the late Sergeant Mike Adjavon of Ghana Armed Forces in the year 1951. Later that year, he formed the Ghana Cycling Association which was fortunately inaugurated by her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England in the year 6th June 1953.

Adjivon started the Association with his colleagues in the Army who used to do publicity tour from Accra to Koforidua, Cape Coast and Ho just to create the awareness of cycling in Ghana and also to whip out the public interest in cycling. All these stages, Mr. Mike was sponsoring the tour all by himself.

Later, Mike introduced his family into cycling. Because of that it was very popular in areas like latebiokoshie where he was staying with his family, Accra Town Council and Osu and he was later on supported by Mr. Lartey a.k.a. Warabeba, Mr. Koffie, and Mr. Quaye to start group cycling in the late 1950’s. These people contributed a lot into the development of cycling in Ghana. They started organizing weekly and monthly cycling races in and around Accra.

Later on G.B. Oliver came on board and helped Mike to organize the first competitive cycling race of which sixteen cyclists took part, The race was won by Mike due to his superior bicycle which he brought from England on his military assignment, he had the opportunity of watching an international cycling race in London which had increase his understanding of cycling. Mr. Mike took Ghanaian cycling to another level by introducing Raleigh sports bicycles into the sporting field of Ghana. This had made a lot of cyclists in Ghana at that time to go in for such bicycles because it was lighter, faster and easy to ride. Sgt. Mike Adjivon reigned for a long time as a cyclists champion and founder starting from the 50’s to 70’s.

The Ghana Cycling Association came under the banner of National Sports Council in the 1960s and eventually became member of the International Cycling Union (UCI) in 1970. This membership was facilitated by Raleigh Bicycle Association in Britain through the instrumentality of Mr. Mike Adjavon.

Their first international cycling race was in Togo where Sgt. Mike and Mr. Lartey represented. The Team won a silver medal for mother Ghana in 1966 in Lome.

The first junior cycling race was organized in 1970 by yet again Sgt. Mike for which he made almost all his children to take part in the race. He even bought bicycles for his children to ride to school that made cycling popular in their Area Lartebiokorshie suburb of Accra.

The dominance of Mike Adjavon’s family in the race of cycling in Ghana was broken by one Mr. Peter Affort in 1977 who became very much interested in cycling by just witnessing one of the many competitions organized by Mr. Mike Adjivon early in 1976. Mr. Peter Affort, like Mike also came back from Holland with a superior racing bicycle with 10 speed which was not yet in the sporting field of Ghana for that matter; he was able to unseat the dominance of Adjivon family in the field of bicycle racing at El-walk.

For the first time in the history of cycling in Ghana in 1977, the National Sports Council gave One Hundred Thousand Cedis developmental funds to Mike to develop and promote cycling in Ghana.

Mr. Lartey and Mr. Koffie rode from Ghana to Nigeria to partake in non scoring bases of a cycling race organized by supreme military council of zone three in Nigeria. In 1980, when age was not kind to late Sgt. Adjavon, he graciously released his position as the Chairman of Ghana cycling association to his son, Mr. Stanley Adjavon and Mr. Peter Affort as his Vice.

Ghana cycling took an international dimension during the early part of the nineties when the Ghana Cycling Association started organizing Tour du Accra and Tour du Ghana. The maiden edition of Tour du Accra was won by Mr. Joe Sackey of Peugeot cycling club in 1993 and he was sent to France to participate in the famous Tour de France. And in 1996, Ghana Cycling Association organized for the first time International Cycling Tour du Ghana where two nations took part. The tour took the teams from Accra through Takoradi, Kumasi, and Koforidua and back to Accra in seven days. The race was won by Emmanuel Annan.

In 1996, John Zormelo of River Park won the third edition of International Tour de Ghana which was sponsored by Cowbell Ghana Limited. That was the first corporate body in Ghana to sponsor any cycling race in the country.

Cycling in Ghana also received another booster by the introduction of Cowbell Cycling League into Ghanaian cycling sports in the year 1999/2000 where the maiden edition was won by Emmanuel T. Wayo of All Stars Cycling Club.

When Mr. Stanley Adjavon passed away, Mr. Lee Darpoh became the Chairman of G.C.A briefly in 1999 and his Vice was Peter Affort. However, it was later reversed to Mr. Peter Affort as the Chairman whiles Mr. Lee became the Vice.

The two gentlemen stirred the affairs of cycling until 2003 where the Association was reconstituted and both of them were replaced by Mr. Mohammed Sahnoon and Mr. Romair Adjavon as Chairman and Vice respectively. These executive managed to send the Association `back to the International Cycling Union (UCI) and Confederation of Africa Cycling(C.A.C) fraternity in 2007. The Association was expelled from these international bodies in the 80’s because of non participation and non-payment of the affiliation fees and activities of U.C.I.

In early part 2009, there was another reconstitution of the various Associations in Ghana which consequently affected the Cycling Association. The incumbent Chairman at that time was thus replaced by Mr. Lee Darpoh. This eventually caused some legal dispute with regards to the constitution of the Association and that of the UCI. The impasse is however, yet to be resolved. Meanwhile, Mr. Lee Darpoh is fully functioning as the substantive Chairman of the Association and duly recognized by the Government of Ghana.

The Government, the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the National Sports Council are doing everything within their utmost authority to resolve the impasse.