Two teenage sprinters who fled instability in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are preparing to represent the Refugee Olympic Team at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, marking the first time refugee athletes will compete at the event.

Florence Masumbe and Rachid Rochene, who now live in Uganda, are among six refugee athletes selected to participate in the Games, which will take place in the Senegalese capital from 31 October to 13 November.

For the two youngsters, the competition represents an opportunity to pursue their sporting ambitions while opening doors to education and a better future.

“I feel good, I feel so wonderful. You know, this was a dream since I was young. I wanted to compete with people, to see how I can also do, to also achieve medals. You know, why not also a world record,” said Rochene.

While he lives in an urban part of Uganda, Masumbe has spent much of her 16 years in the Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement in a predominantly rural area of south-western Uganda.

She hopes taking part in the Games will help transform her life and inspire other young refugees to pursue their ambitions.

“I was so happy to have been selected to go to Dakar. I know if I continue with athletics, it will transform my life and I can get a good school. My family members will also have better opportunities, and even other refugee children will be inspired,” Masumbe said.

Sport as a path to opportunity

The pair’s selection follows years of work by the Olympic Refuge Foundation and its partners in Uganda to use sport to support displaced people and host communities.

Their athletic talents were identified through Game Connect, a six-year initiative designed to improve mental health and wellbeing through sport.

Brandon Katura, coordinator of the initiative, said the programme had given the young athletes a renewed sense of purpose and new ambitions.

“Seven months or a year ago, they were probably running for fun, or they came out for trials just to do it as a way of passing time because they were free,” he said.

“Now you find that they are excited, they are looking forward to travelling. They are looking forward to competing with people from other countries. They want to get scholarships for school.”

The International Olympic Committee and its partners in Uganda have contributed nearly $10,000 over the past year to prepare Masumbe and Rochene for the competition, covering the work needed to help them pursue their Olympic ambitions.

Their journey highlights the challenges refugee athletes face in accessing training, education, and the resources needed to compete at international level.

A symbol of hope for refugees

The IOC has spent the past decade promoting the inclusion of displaced athletes through the Refugee Olympic Team, which has provided opportunities for those forced to flee their homes to compete on the international stage.

The participation of refugee athletes at the Youth Olympic Games extends that initiative to a younger generation.

According to the United Nations refugee agency, nearly 118 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced.

For Masumbe and Rochene, the focus is now on their performance on the track in Dakar.

But their participation also carries a broader message about the role sport can play in restoring confidence, creating opportunities, and helping young refugees imagine a future beyond displacement.

Edinburgh will host the most northerly Tour de France start in 2027 while the Pyrenees will provide the competitive finale of next year’s route, which was announced in Paris on Thursday.

A year after the race’s most southerly start in Barcelona, the Scottish capital will surpass the 2022 Grand Depart in Copenhagen in the opposite direction, as for the fifth time in six years, the Tour sets off from abroad.

The Edinburgh start had been known for more than a year and the first three stages in Britain – in Scotland, England and then Wales – were revealed in January.

But organisers ASO published the full route on Thursday, with two individual time-trials and a closing stage around Paris taking on the already iconic Montmartre climb for the third year running.

That is sure to whet the appetite after the last two years produced thrilling finishes, with Belgian Wout van Aert taking the victory in 2025 and Mathieu van der Poel, with a bit of help from overall winner Tadej Pogacar, holding off a charging peloton by inches back in July.

But long before the peloton arrives there for the finale of the 114th edition of the Tour – and even before it reaches the high mountains – there will be plenty of opportunities for cycling’s renowned “puncheurs” to take centre stage in the first part of the race.

“Wales is Liege-Bastogne-Liege,” Tour director Christian Prudhomme told AFP about the third stage in 2027, in reference to the famous hilly spring one-day classic.

“The first 10 days are designed to keep the jerseys changing hands – the best puncheurs in the world against the overall favourites.”

The best in both of those categories is Pogacar, but the course design aims to avoid a repeat of the 2026 edition when the Slovenian great – who will be bidding for a record sixth yellow jersey victory – held the lead almost from beginning to end.

Prudhomme said he wanted “to muddy the waters, to have a route which allows for anything to happen”.

Riders will face a windy arrival in France on the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy, with a fourth stage largely ridden along the coast.

Even before the first mountain challenge on stage nine, finishing on the Grand Colombier in the Jura range, the sprinters will struggle to find too many days that favour them.

‘TERRIBLY STEEP’

The first time-trial is on stage seven and at 38km and pancake-flat, it should leave Olympic and world champion in the discipline Remco Evenepoel salivating.

He finished second to Pogacar in July but the early part of the 2027 edition should give him a great chance to steal a march on the Slovenian before the mountains begin.

A second time-trial of 33km around Toulouse on stage 16 should again favour the Belgian.

There will be no shortage of mountains, though, with 28 climbs and a total elevation gain of 53 450m, but just three summit finishes among six mountainous stages.

The highest point will be the Col du Portet in the Pyrenees on stage 18, topping off at 2 215m above sea level.

But there will be no Alpe d’Huez, Ventoux, Galibier or Izoard in 2027, although the Tour will take on the Tourmalet and pass through Domancy, where the world championships will be held the following month.

“If you want to discover other climbs, you have to accept that we don’t systematically use the best-known ones,” said Prudhomme.

“It’s the first time that we will link the Tourmalet and the Portet – two monsters – and the next day there will also be terribly steep ascents with the return of the Basque climbs Burdincurutcheta and Bagargui for the first time since 2023.”

Curiously, though, the 20th and penultimate stage is designed for the sprinters, meaning that the Tour should be sewn up two days before the Montmartre excitement in Paris.

Former Tokyo marathon winner Ruti Aga has been banned for six years for taking a banned substance and then trying to mislead investigators, the Athletics Integrity Unity (AIU) said on Thursday.

The 32-year-old Ethiopian won the Tokyo race in 2019 and finished in the top three in four World Marathon Majors.

An anti-doping test she took after a race in China in March this year showed traces of methylprednisolone, an anti-inflammatory medicine often used to treat severe asthma that is on the prohibited list.

The AIU said Aga then attempted to mislead investigators by providing false information in an interview and producing a forced document “that purported to verify a prescription for methylprednisolone while as an outpatient of a medical facility”.

Aga attributed her positive test to treatment for a knee injury but the prescription she submitted was from a non-existent clinic and issued by a ‘doctor’ who turned out to be a family member with no medical registration.

Aga received a two-year ban for doping, with an added four years for tampering with evidence.

“We have made significant progress against doping in marathon running over the past six to seven years, but much remains to be done. Investigations are vital to uncovering doping and exposing false explanations. Protecting clean competition takes resources, but this case sends a clear message: attempts to cheat will be exposed,” AIU chief executive Brett Clothier said in a statement.