Burkina: Hugues Fabrice Zango stops, after the 2024 Olympics

The triple jump world champion, Burkinabè Hugues Fabrice Zango, confided during a press conference he hosted on Saturday in Ouagadougou that after the Paris Olympic Games in 2024 , his adventure will end when it comes to the Olympics.

‘After these Olympics, it’s over for me. Between two Olympics 4 years ago and it’s certain that I’m not going to go to Los Angeles in 2028 (where the 2028 Olympics are to take place),’ declared triple jump world champion Hugues Fabrice Zango in front of the journalists.

He continued that ‘after the 2024 Games, maybe I will do a year or two, or not at all, I don’t know yet.’ Mr. Zango thanked ‘God, my parents, my friends, the Burkinabè State, the Ministry of Sports, the Fund, the CNOSB, the Burkinabè Athletics Federation, all my moral and financial support…’ for allowing him to ‘be where he is now.

He thought of the president of the Burkinabè Athletics Federation Frédéric Sidibé who died while winning his gold medal. The triple jump world champion will not completely abando
n athletics.

He will be alongside his little brothers who want to follow in his footsteps. ‘I love my little brothers who want to excel. I love serving my country. The fight will continue because it is next year that it will be decided,’ he said, while quoting the motto of Burkina Faso: ‘homeland or death, we will win.’

For him there must be an impact of his results on the mind and vision on the sport. ‘When I win and the FDS that I had to visit during my previous visits to Burkina tell me that they are really happy and that this galvanizes them to the front to fight against terrorism, it is magic of sports. When I win and an 8-year-old girl promises me to work well at school and to listen to her parents to become like me, it’s my magic in sport,’ he insisted.

Projects in perspective

Hugues Zango is drawing the lines of a project to promote the practice of athletics in Burkina Faso.

‘We are going to launch a project which has several components and which will require funding in the hope that good souls c
oncerned about the future generation will be willing to support us. One of the aspects concerns the organization of a caravan. We called it the Olympic Games (OG) caravan, which we hope will last four years. This caravan will be held between January and June 2024,’ he says.

‘It will be held in six stages through Ouaga, Bobo and Koudougou. The caravan will target high schools and colleges and/or universities, etc., (with supporting gifts that can motivate students to follow along better). The idea is to bring together around ten schools at each stage and each school will bring together a team of six participants,’ explains Hugues Zango.

According to him, ‘we have chosen the disciplines representative of our current high-level sport (jumping, cycling, sprinting, weightlifting, a quiz and crawling, etc.). Each team will field only one competitor per event and at the end of each event we will just rank from 1st to last. The 1st will have ten points and the last one point.

‘The goal is to count the school that
will win with all of its six participants. With the Olympics caravan we thought of making a jersey to allow the population of Burkina to support the Olympic movement by espousing its values. On the jersey we broadcast messages. These are messages that stick to today’s realities. It’s a jersey that was designed with the Olympic rings and some representative sports, with a word that speaks to us in relation to our situation.’

He mentions that ‘the proceeds will be used to support certain athletes, to finance certain structuring projects for the next generation and to finance some of our athletes who are in the process of qualifying’.

‘The last part will consist of offering an immersion in the form of a 5-minute video capsule, the preparation of some of our athletes who are claiming Olympic qualification or who are already qualified (like Marthe Koala and me), several times a year that we will offer to young audiences in the hope that this will further motivate young people to be able to follow the Olympic Gam
es on TV. We need sponsors to make this happen. We plan to impact 25,000 young people,’ he concluded.

Source: Burkina Information Agency