Judo teaches balance, patience and how to get back up after a fall. For the Dakar 2026 refugee judoka competing in the men’s 55kg category, those lessons are far more than sporting clichés. They describe a life lived far from home.
A first for the Youth Olympics
When the Youth Olympic Games open in Senegal on 31 October, they will carry a historic first. Dakar 2026 is the first Olympic event ever held on African soil, and it welcomes the first Refugee Olympic Team at a Youth Olympics. Six athletes aged 15 to 17 make up the squad, three boys and three girls. All are based in Africa and hosted by the Olympic committees of Kenya and Uganda. They will compete in athletics, judo and taekwondo.
The team’s judoka, listed as Arno, is hosted by Kenya and fights at -55kg. He joins sprinters and middle-distance runners, some of whom fled unrest in eastern DR Congo.
More than medals
The team’s chef de mission knows this road well. Yiech Pur Biel, originally from South Sudan, grew up partly in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp and ran the 800m at Rio 2016 with the first Refugee Olympic Team. He says the squad’s main goal is not the podium but showing the world that refugees need support.
Congolese sprinter Masimbi, who sought refuge in Uganda, put it plainly in Kaptagat during training. Many people think refugees are not talented, she said, and the team is working to prove otherwise.
Why it matters at home
The numbers behind the story are heavy. UNHCR estimates more than 117 million people are displaced worldwide, and nearly four in ten are under 18. Africa hosts a large share of them, and Kenya alone shelters more than 800,000 refugees and asylum seekers.
For a teenager in a camp, seeing someone like them in a national-style tracksuit on an Olympic stage can change what feels possible. The judoka may or may not win a medal in Dakar. But every time he steps onto the tatami, he makes the case that talent has no passport.
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