ITEN, Kenya -- Five years ago, Sammy Ekiru was negotiating traffic on his bicycle taxi for roughly three dollars a day in Kitale, a remote Kenyan town 20 miles from the Ugandan border. Today, he and his bike remain inseparable. His labor and his livelihood, however, have taken a substantially different course. Ekiru is a member of a trailblazing squad of Kenyan competitive cyclists who have managed to introduce cycling to a country with virtually no history of it. The Kenyan Riders, a project launched by a Singaporean entrepreneur, Nicholas Leong, in 2007, have not set their sights modestly. In the more than a century since the first Tour de France, a black African team has never been a contender. The Kenyan Riders aim to change that. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]