Nigeria’s Aidan Dumuje-Abili finished 11th overall in the boys’ 50m backstroke at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, clocking 27.71 seconds on Thursday to miss the eight-swimmer final by 0.48 seconds. Kristabel Chisa Oldeide finished second in her girls’ heat but also missed out on a place in the medal race.
Dumuje-Abili, 15, raced from lane two in the fifth and final heat at the Complexe Tour de l’Oeuf Aquatic Centre. He recorded a reaction time of 0.56 seconds and touched fourth, ahead of Aruba’s Ocean Van Loon, who finished in 27.94.
Greece’s Nikolaos Papatheodorou won the heat in 26.03, the fastest time of the morning. Belgium’s Alexander Van Hoey Billiet was second in 26.15 and Iran’s Parsa Shahsahani third in 26.96. All three advanced to the final.
Cyprus’s Andrew Marcus Laghoutis took the last qualifying place with 27.23. Madagascar’s Tendry Rakotobe and Kenya’s Jeremy Rieck finished ninth and tenth overall and were named reserves. Dumuje-Abili was next in the standings, 0.22 seconds behind Rieck.
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The 11th-place finish was Dumuje-Abili’s highest overall ranking across three of his events in Dakar. He was 19th in the 100m butterfly after swimming 59.73 seconds and 15th in Wednesday’s 50m butterfly in 26.05. He also raced the 100m backstroke, finishing fifth in his heat in 1:00.79.
Oldeide, also 15, touched in 32.47 seconds in the second girls’ 50m backstroke heat. She finished 0.46 seconds behind heat winner Amna Thazkiyah Mirsaad and held off Ghana’s Mercedes Abdallah by three hundredths of a second. Oldeide placed 30th overall, with 29.81 the cutoff for the final.
Papatheodorou returned in the afternoon to share the boys’ gold with Portugal’s Miguel Reis Oliveira after both clocked 25.69. Van Hoey Billiet took bronze in 25.91. South Africa’s Eric Kotze, the only African swimmer to qualify for that final, finished fourth in 26.16.
Romania’s Daria-Mariuca Silisteanu won the girls’ final in 27.93. South Korea’s Seungwon Kim took silver in 28.21 and Brazil’s Cecilia Dieleke claimed bronze in 28.83.
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