Hockey Takes Over Dakar’s Place du Souvenir as Youth Olympic Focus Day Lights Up Senegal
Dakar 2026 is the first Olympic event ever held on African soil, and on Wednesday hockey got its own day in the sun there.
The FIH’s Hockey Focus Day took over Place du Souvenir in Dakar, with hundreds of local schoolchildren, young players and fans rotating through three sessions on a purpose-built 10m x 15m Hockey5s court. Hockey5s is the Games’ featured engagement sport here, and the idea is simple: put a stick in a kid’s hand and let the game do the talking.
Great Britain international Darcy Bourne was there as the IOC’s Athlete Role Model, welcoming groups of children and talking through her own journey in the sport. Leaders from the Senegal Hockey Federation laid out how hockey is growing across the country, and there was a poignant moment too, honouring the federation’s late president Abdoulaye Mbengue, who died only days before the Games.
FIH president Tayyab Ikram called it a fantastic opportunity to introduce young local people to the sport for the very first time. The court stays open daily at Place du Souvenir, free of charge, with workshops running through 14 November, and FIKAGEAR has gifted a full set of Hockey5s rebound boards to the Senegal association as part of its FIH Academy partnership.
It’s easy to dismiss this stuff as ceremony. Don’t. Every hockey country started with a day like this, a court in a public square and a kid who’d never held a stick. Dakar just did it on an Olympic stage.
