Kenya at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympics: a record team, and athletics chasing gold

The fourth Summer Youth Olympic Games open in Dakar on Saturday 31 October, the first Olympic event ever held in Africa. Kenya travels with its biggest Youth Olympic team yet: 53 athletes in 13 sports, and girls make up about four in five of the squad. Team officials say Kenya has previously taken at most 18 athletes to a Youth Olympics.

Athletics: 8 to 10 November

The athletics programme is on 8, 9 and 10 November at the Complexe Iba Mar Diop in Dakar.

Athletics has carried Kenya at past editions: all 15 of the country's Youth Olympic medals, 8 gold, 3 silver and 4 bronze across Singapore 2010, Nanjing 2014 and Buenos Aires 2018, have come in athletics. Team officials say the wider squad is a deliberate change. "We are being ambitious because we have diversified and are not going to Dakar with athletics alone," Chef de Mission Angelah Luchivia told Citizen Digital.

One to watch: David Kapaiko

Sixteen-year-old David Kapaiko runs the boys' 800m and says he is going for gold. "The way I have been training, I feel that gold will come," he told Pulse Sports. His coach, Edcain Mutua, compares his focus to that of David Rudisha: "When you look at how David Rudisha used to run and look at David [Kapaiko], he is so focused."

Medal hopes

"We have training teams in Mombasa and at Kenyatta University, and we are optimistic that we are going to win," said NOCK first deputy president Barnaba Korir.

Kenyan great Eliud Kipchoge is a Games ambassador in Dakar. We will follow every Kenyan in the athletics events and post the results here.