Moroccan Cyclist Fatima El Hayani Makes History as First Arab Woman to Join Pro Team

With the signing of this contract, Fatima El Hayani is not far from the realization of her dearest dream, that of one day becoming world road champion. "My true dream is to become world road champion one day, to show little Moroccan girls that anything is possible. I was already dreaming this dream when I was sleeping on the street with my bike. I know I will succeed, my destiny awaits me!" confides the young Moroccan to the newspaper Le Parisien.

It took the intervention of Yann Dejan, national technical director of Moroccan cycling, for the doors of Europe to open to the young cyclist. One day he had summoned Fatima, already crowned junior African champion and Moroccan champion, to his office. She remembers it was in Casablanca, 160 km from her home. "I went there by bike through the Atlas. I was angry and I wanted to tell him that the Federation was doing nothing for the girls," she recounts. The DTN offered her to go to Brittany to train with young French cyclists.

As a child, this native of Oued Beth, a deserted region of Morocco, was already trying her hand at cycling. She went to school every day by bike, 20 kilometers from her family home. "The roads were bad, but I loved cycling," the young woman recalls. From a poor family, she knew poverty. She remembers having no place to spend the night after certain training sessions or races. But hope never left her.