Host nation Senegal sent 16-year-olds Mahib Amar and Woreye Ndiaye to wushu's Youth Olympic debut. Neither reached a final, but head coach Ousmane Sakho, who once trained his students on a borrowed rooftop, says the journey matters more than any medal.

Host nation Senegal did not win a wushu medal at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, but for head coach Ousmane Sakho simply being there was a dream come true. Two 16-year-olds, Mahib Amar and Woreye Ndiaye, represented Senegal in the taijiquan events as wushu made its debut on the Olympic medal programme in Diamniadio.

Asked by Xinhua whether he had ever imagined bringing young athletes to an Olympic event in his own country, Sakho replied: "Never in my life!"

From a videotape to the Olympic floor

Sakho discovered Chinese martial arts as a child through a kung fu film on videotape. At 20 he decided to spread wushu in Senegal, a country where football dominates. For more than ten years he taught without a dedicated hall or a steady income, often training his students on the rooftop terrace of a borrowed gym.

That changed when wushu was confirmed as an official sport for the Dakar Youth Olympic Games and Sakho was appointed coach of the national youth team. In April 2025 he travelled to China for an International Wushu Federation coaching course on the third set of international competition routines. He later took his athletes to the World Junior Wushu Championships in Tianjin in March 2026, and in August returned with four young athletes for almost two months of intensive training at the Tianjin Huo Yuanjia school. There, Chinese coaches Zhao Qingjian and Wu Yanan worked with them on flexibility, difficulty movements, music and competition etiquette.

Joy and heartbreak in Diamniadio

The home Games brought mixed fortunes. Ndiaye, who took the athletes' oath at the opening ceremony, was injured in the women's taijishan preliminary on 1 November and could not perform her taijiquan routine the next day. Amar completed both the taijiquan and taijishan preliminaries. He did not reach the final but said he had clearly improved since the World Junior Championships. "Sport is cruel like that," Sakho told Xinhua about Ndiaye's injury.

A base to build on

According to the president of the Senegalese wushu federation, more than 10,000 people now practise wushu in Senegal, and 11 of the country's 14 regions have their own wushu organisations. The federation hopes the Games will help the sport grow and that equipment left behind after the event will improve local training conditions.

Sakho's plan for the future is simple: keep training. Seeing young people find direction through wushu, he said, means more to him than any medal.

Sources: Xinhua (English and Chinese services).

Read more on english.news.cn