The 4th Summer Youth Olympic Games will take place in Dakar from October 31 to November 13. The event will feature 35 sports and bring together around 2,700 athletes aged 15–18 from 206 countries. Among the disciplines making their Youth Olympic debut this year are breaking, skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing, and karate. Ukraine’s breaking team has secured qualification for the women’s tournament in Dakar
According to Yehor Matiukhin, Head of the Breaking Department at the All-Ukrainian Dance Sport and Breaking Federation, Head of Ukraine’s Olympic Breaking Team, and co-founder of the NGO Street Culture, a total of 12 B-Boys and 12 B-Girls will compete at the 2026 Youth Olympic Games. By comparison, breaking’s Olympic debut at the 2024 Paris Games featured 16 B-Boys and 17 B-Girls.
Ukraine’s top candidate for the Dakar Games is Nikol ‘Nika Star’ Dzhuryk (Vinnytsia), who won the Ukrainian National Championship in 2025 and took bronze at the 2025 Gymnasiade for athletes under 15 in Zlatibor, Serbia. Her competitors will include representatives from Bulgaria, Spain, France, Germany, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Morocco, Malaysia, Senegal, and the USA.
In May, the national team held a training camp in Koncha-Zaspa, where reserve athletes for the Youth Olympic Games were selected. As part of the preparation for Dakar 2026, Ukraine’s breaking team will also take part in training camps in Lviv and Kyiv, as well as travel to battle camps and competitions in Germany, Slovakia, Portugal, China, Belgium, and other countries.
Ukraine’s Youth Olympic breaking team for Dakar 2026 will be coached by Denys ‘Gimnast’ Semenykhin, who also trained the country’s athletes ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
‘Adult athletes are more mature and self-aware. They’ve been breaking for over 20 years, they live this culture, and they know exactly what they’re capable of and what the payoff can be, — Semenykhin says. — At the same time, adults tend to experience more stress and even fear because they fully understand the responsibility that comes with competition. When you’re a kid, you just go for it, you’re fearless. That’s an advantage. But adult athletes have a broader skill set, whereas with the younger generation we still have a lot of work to do to develop those skills. So, in reality, coaching both the senior and youth national teams is challenging. With the youth team, however, there’s an additional layer of responsibility because you’re working with children. When you’re coaching adults, they’re responsible for themselves and the coach is responsible for the result. Here, the coach is responsible for everything. That’s a very interesting aspect of the job as well’.
More about Ukraine’s athletes competing at the 2026 Youth Olympic Games
Nikol ‘Nika Star’ Dzhuryk, 14 years old, Vinnytsia
A member of the Sky Labs team from Vinnytsia, coached by Serhii ‘Parashute’ Nebesnyi. She is the 2024–2025 Ukrainian champion in her age category, a member of Ukraine’s national breaking team (2025–2026), and currently ranked No. 21 in the World DanceSport Federation world rankings.
‘I’ve been working toward this for a very long time. Behind this achievement are countless training sessions, challenges, and a lot of work on myself. But even when things got really tough, I never gave up. When I found out that Ukraine had secured a quota place for the women’s event, I couldn’t believe it at first. I thought I must have misunderstood. Now I want Ukraine to achieve a truly great result in Dakar — I want everyone to be talking about us. And if I get the chance to go, I want to prove that Ukrainian breaking is among the strongest in the world’.
Sofiia ‘Soul Kitty’ Sitko, 16 years old, Lutsk
She represents the Lutsk-based Castle Team under the leadership of Taras ‘Mars’ Shostak. She is the 2025 Vice-Champion of Ukraine in her age category and a member of the 2026 Ukrainian breaking national team.
‘Honestly, I never thought I would end up as the top-ranked reserve athlete. I was competing against incredibly strong and talented B-Girls. This has given me the motivation to fight, to go to major world competitions, and to make a name for myself there. Another huge source of motivation for me was my coach, Taras. We’ve stepped up my training schedule a lot now, because before this, truth be told, I barely trained. Now we’re doing everything we can to perform at a high level in both Ukrainian and international competitions’.
Viktoriia ‘Vika Wins’ Kravchenko, 13 years old, Boryspil
She represents the Boryspil-based Reborn Clan team under the leadership of Ihor ‘Chester’ Sichkar. She is the 2025 Vice-Champion of Ukraine in her age category and a member of the 2026 Ukrainian breaking national team.
‘I started rhythmic gymnastics when I was three years old, and when I was five my mom took me to a breaking class. Just a year later, I began winning competitions and developing as an athlete. In 2023, I made the top eight at a prestigious tournament in Budapest. But at the time, I felt like I had failed. I stopped believing in myself and even thought about quitting breaking altogether. I took a six-month break. Then I realized that I didn’t see a future for myself in any other sport and that my heart truly belonged to breaking. Now I’ve been selected as the second reserve athlete for the national team. For me, that’s a huge source of motivation to keep working and improving’.
