Six mornings a week Zahra Alizada is on her bike long before 5am, slipping through the grey pre-dawn in a small pack of women savouring the brief peace on Kabul’s normally hectic, dusty streets.

Afghans rise early, and many of them are still scandalised to see a woman in sports kit speeding past on a racing bike. The Afghan women’s cycling team know this because, as the traffic swells towards the end of their morning training at around seven, men and boys start hurling insults and sometimes stones or chunks of rubbish at the women as they ride past.  More