Sidestepping threats and jeers, the Afghan women on the country's national cycling team are risking their lives to compete and doing their part to help women's rights race forward in the war-torn nation. 

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Salma Kakar just turned 16 but she’s already leading a revolution on two wheels.

She’s the lead rider on the new Afghan National Cycling Team and, says Coach Abdul Seddiqi, the joyous face of a new phenomenon in the war-torn country: females riding bikes.

“I assure you...in the next two or three years you will find girls and women riding bikes, all over Kabul," said Seddiqi.

Right now, even though Seddiqi says scores of young girls are waiting in the wings, it’s just Salma and her dozen female teammates making a statement in the face of Afghanistan’s male-dominated society: that while women rarely drive cars almost never ride bikes, that’s now history.

“We are changing minds,” Salma said through an interpreter. Then, her serious expression changed back to the 100-watt smile that glows like a headlamp when she rides.

Her dream, she says, is “to wave the flag of Afghanistan in the Olympics, to prove to the world that women in Afghanistan have progressed.”

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