Nigeria achieve historic sprint double at Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games
Rosemary Nwankwo and Gift Bright won the women’s and men’s 100m titles on the opening day of athletics.
Nigeria swept both 100m sprint titles at Dakar 2026 on 9 November 2026. Rosemary Nwankwo won the women’s race and Gift Bright won the men’s race in a personal best of 10.28 seconds.
Key takeaways
- Nigeria won both men’s and women’s 100m titles at Dakar 2026.
- Rosemary Nwankwo won the women’s 100m gold.
- Gift Bright won the men’s 100m gold in 10.28 seconds.
- Bright’s gold was Nigeria’s first boys’ Youth Olympic 100m sprint title.
- Nwankwo became the third Nigerian woman to win Youth Olympic 100m gold.
Nigeria achieved a historic sprint double at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games on 9 November 2026. Rosemary Nwankwo won the women’s 100m and Gift Bright won the men’s 100m on the opening day of athletics competition in Senegal.
Nigeria’s teenage sprinters claim double gold
Nigeria’s teenage sprinters, Rosemary Nwankwo and Gift Bright, emerged fastest male and female athletes of the ongoing 2026 Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, Senegal. Bright completed the sprint double for Nigeria. He gave an outstanding performance in the boys’ final to win in a personal best of 10.28 seconds. His gold was the first for Team Nigeria boys in the Youth Olympic Games 100m sprint.
Historic precedents for Nigerian women
The win made Nwankwo the third Nigerian woman to take Youth Olympic 100m gold, following Josephine Omaka at the inaugural Singapore 2010 Games and Rosemary Chukwuma at Buenos Aires 2018.
Team Nigeria’s contingent and the Games
Team Nigeria arrived in Senegal with a focused 19-athlete contingent — 12 women and seven men — competing across six sports. The Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games mark a historic milestone as the first Olympic sporting event ever staged on African soil.
Running from 31 October to 13 November across venues in Dakar, Diamniadio and Saly, the Games bring together roughly 2,700 athletes aged 14–17 from more than 200 National Olympic Committees in 25 sports.
What happens next
Athletics continues across Dakar, Diamniadio and Saly until 13 November 2026. Team Nigeria’s 19-athlete contingent will compete across six sports. The Youth Olympic Games are an international multi-sport event for athletes aged 15 to 18 years old.
Organized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Games are held every four years in staggered summer and winter events consistent with the current Olympic Games format, though in reverse order with the Winter Olympic Games held in leap years instead of the Games of the Olympiad.
The first summer version was held in Singapore from 14 to 26 August 2010 while the first winter version was held in Austria from 13 to 22 January 2012.
The 2026 Summer Youth Olympics, officially known as the IV Summer Youth Olympic Games and commonly known as Dakar 2026, is the fourth edition of the Summer Youth Olympics, an international sports, education and cultural festival for teenagers, in a city designated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Originally scheduled to be held for 18 days in Dakar, Senegal, from 22 October to 9 November 2022, it is now scheduled to be held there for 14 days—from 31 October to 13 November 2026, becoming the first IOC event to be held in Africa and the first Youth Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Kirsty Coventry.
Nigeria’s sprint double at Dakar 2026
Event | Winner | Time |
|---|---|---|
Men’s 100m | Gift Bright | 10.28 seconds |
Women’s 100m | Rosemary Nwankwo | Not given |
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