Senegal’s wrestlers turn tradition into gold at Dakar Youth Olympics

Senegal’s young wrestlers thrive as they adapt skills from their traditional sport to beach wrestling at Dakar’s Youth Olympics. Sixteen-year-old Elisabeth Diatta is from the southern Senegalese region of Casamance. Football was her sport, not wrestling. Yet, On Saturday, there she was on the sand at Saly beach, representing Senegal in beach wrestling at Dakar’s Youth Olympics , almost instinctively seizing her opponent and throwing her down. Then came the whistle, the referee’s look, the confirmation, the disbelief.

She celebrated like Cristiano Ronaldo; the leap, the turn, the “Siu!” The crowd roared. Diatta danced, defiant, before wrapping herself in green, yellow and red. Beneath the Senegalese flag’s green star, a new star was born. Her path here began when her older sister Jeannine was injured and could not enter a wrestling tournament at a sport camp. Diatta took her place.

She won her first bout. The footballer kept wrestling. “They said wrestling would make me less feminine,” explains Diatta – the “they” she is referring to are the adults around here.