Dakar 2026 Youth Olympics: South Africa equals best-ever medal tally
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on Daily Maverick
South African young athletes have won nine medals at the Dakar Youth Olympic Games, including two golds, equalling their record from Singapore in 2010. On 9 November, Matao le Roux won gold in the high jump, according to Daily Maverick.
South Africa has won nine medals at the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Dakar, including two golds, equalling its best total, set at the first Youth Olympics in Singapore in 2010, according to Daily Maverick. These Games, the first held on the African continent, run from 31 October to 13 November.
On 9 November, athletics brought three more medals. Matao le Roux won gold in the high jump with 2.16 m, Enrique Bosch took bronze in the 110 m hurdles and Darius Botha bronze in the shot put. With this total, the country is level with France in fifth place in the overall standings. At the Buenos Aires Youth Olympics in 2018, South Africa won five medals, compared with just one in Nanjing in 2014.
John-Pierre Theron won silver in the hammer throw with 71.79 m, behind Ecuador’s Ivan Patry Valdez Arroyo (73.27 m). A final-year high school pupil, he was competing in his first international event: “The pressure was much greater than anything I had experienced before.”
