Cycling: Gambian cyclists ride their luck (without bikes)

In the finest sporting traditions of Eddie the Eagle, Jamaica's 1994 bobsleigh team and Equatorial Guinea's Sydney Olympian swimmer Eric "the Eel" Moussambani, the Manchester Commonwealth Games offered new characters yesterday for the encyclopaedia of heroic lost causes: the Gambian cycling team which turned up with no bikes.

The omission had nothing to with forgetfulness on the part of a two-man team making its international competitive debut at the Games, which begin today. The competitors' seven-year-old bikes were, in the words of their national squad's leader, George Gomez, "too old to make it to the finishing line".

They were also designed for Gambia's entirely unmountainous terrain, rather than the hills north of Bolton where the Gambians are competing in next week's 170-mile road race. The competition guidebook warns them that the "gruelling" race will "test man and machine to the limit as tired legs and creaking metal eat up kilometre after kilometre of tarmac".

The Gambian team's plan had been to buy bikes when they got to Britain, though the retail price of competition bikes ­ up to £5,000 apiece, against the £1,200 they had budgeted ­ soon put a spoke in that wheel. Thank heavens, in such grave circumstances, for Ribble Cycles of Preston, which has agreed to sell them two £800 custom-built 10-speed bicycles at cost price, and throw in helmets, windbreakers and shoes for good measure.

At a rainswept Bolton this week, the 21-year-old competitors, Eliman Jammeh and Mamudou Bah, were undergoing their daily six-hour practice regime which, George Gomez said, had been dominated by the challenge of "getting used to the changing of gears when they go uphill". The hills had been tough, Jammeh later conceded. "But we are adjusting to the gears."

His reasons for optimism include victory for the past two years in the only serious warm-up race for the Games ­ the 500km pan-nation "Cycling for Peace" event, which has been held for the past five yearsto raise awareness of the 12-year-old separatist war in Senegal.

Gomez described Bah, who only started riding two years ago, as "a sensation". He added: "News has reached home about the new bikes, so hopes are high. I don't think we'll be bringing up the rear."

If he is right there will be others queuing up for Manchester's book of heroic losers ­ including the Ugandan shooters who have arrived minus their rifles, which they could not get past an alert team of customs officers.