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Final line-ups confirmed for Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games

21 October 2026

Dakar (Senegal)

Real name:

Ismail Ezzeldin aiming at the Abidjan 2025 African Championships.

The final line-ups for the recurve men’s and women’s events at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games have been confirmed.

As at the previous edition in Buenos Aires in 2018, there will be 32 archers in each of the under-18 men’s and women’s categories, with all athletes competing in their respective individual events. The Dakar Games were originally scheduled for 2022 but were postponed to 2026 because of the pandemic. Fifty of the 64 archers will also compete in the mixed team tournament.

Quota places were allocated through a ranking system based on minimum qualification scores, with places distributed through continental allocations and an open allocation.

Dakar will be the fourth edition of the Youth Olympic Games to feature archery, following Singapore 2010, Nanjing 2014 and Buenos Aires 2018. It will also be the first edition held in Africa.

Although Senegal has no entries, the Senegalese capital will welcome 13 archers from across Africa from 6-10 November.

Two of them are Egyptian archers Ismail Ezzeldin and Nouray Elsayed, who will hope to follow in the footsteps of fellow Ibrahim Sabry, the Singapore 2010 men’s champion and one of the first archery gold medallists at the Games.

Ezzeldin will be one to watch, having won the recurve under-18 men’s title at the Oran 2026 African Championships earlier this year.

He and Elsayed will be joined by archers from Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mauritius, South Africa and Tunisia.

Dunya Yenihayat looking back to her coach after shooting a shot at Madrid 2026.

The representatives of Algeria, Guinea and Tunisia have already made history before stepping onto the field at Abdoulaye Wade Stadium, becoming the first archers from their respective countries to compete at a Youth Olympic Games.

Other countries making their archery debuts at the Youth Olympic Games include Georgia, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.

Georgia’s sole representative, Daviti Basiladze, is one of the youngest athletes competing in Dakar at 16 years old. He recently trained at the World Archery Excellence Centre in Lausanne in preparation for the event, alongside Bulgaria’s Neda Kenderova.

Despite his age, Basiladze is one to watch in the recurve under-18 men’s category. He won gold in the event at the Sion 2023 European Youth Cup at just 13 years old.

Meanwhile, 17-year-old Dunya Yenihayat has already demonstrated her potential in the senior recurve women’s category.

She has been selected for Türkiye’s recurve women’s team at the last three World Cup stages, partnering with Tokyo 2020 Olympic Champion Mete Gazoz in the mixed team event.

Yenihayat became the under-18 European Champion this summer and will be a strong contender among the 32 recurve women competing in Dakar.