Swiss and Senegalese youth practice traditional wrestling in Dakar

The Swiss Embassy and Émile François Gomis organized a wrestling event in a suburb of Dakar, Senegal, to promote cultural exchange during the Olympic Junior Games.

This event paired three young Swiss wrestlers with their Senegalese peers to compare Schwingen, a traditional Swiss combat sport, with Laamb, a traditional Senegalese wrestling style. The participants practiced both styles, alternating between rounds governed by Swiss rules and rounds following Senegalese customs.

During the Laamb rounds, the Senegalese wrestlers performed protective rituals, including scattering salt and pouring water over their bodies, and began the matches with a powerful dance. Mattieu Burger, a Swiss wrestler, noted that the Senegalese style required maintaining a greater distance than the Swiss style, where wrestlers maintain constant contact.

Patricia Danzi, the ambassador and director of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, stated that the event demonstrates the goal of the Olympic Junior Games to foster inclusion and cooperation. Unlike the senior Olympic Games, these games focus less on commercialization and more on bringing people from different cultures together. The event concluded as a well attended public festival, marking the first time an Olympic event of this kind took place on African soil.