South Africa has never won a single medal at beach sprint world championships, and 16 year old Callum Dreyer had never even raced in a world competition until Dakar 2026. In fact, he only began rowing 15 months ago. Now he’ll head home with one of just three Youth Olympic Games beach sprint gold medals, after defeating Spain’s Diego Molina in the men’s solo A final.
“It’s really amazing to represent the country, and to represent Africa as a whole,” Dreyer said after his race. “I would have laughed a couple of years ago if you’d told me I could win this gold medal.”
In the B final, Hungary’s Adam Moor beat Egypt’s Yossuf Moursi by just 0.83 seconds to win bronze. Moursi was one of the rowers who competed in both the mixed double and the solo at Dakar 2026, and even though he’d backed off significantly in his semifinal against Dreyer, he looked fatigued in his last race. Moor, meanwhile, hadn’t reached the finals unscathed, after his boat caught a wave and turned sideways before flipping as he approached the beach in his semifinal.
“I caught a wave and my foot slipped out. There was an issue with the shoe plate and I couldn’t get out, then the wave destroyed me and the boat handlers,” he explained at the end. “In this sport you have to be mentally focused and prepared to handle these situations.”
In the women’s solos, China’s Lili Liu defeated Germany’s Carolina Guerra Gonzalez to win her second gold medal of Dakar 2026. She had previously won gold in the women’s double with teammate Juntao Su yesterday.
Like Moor, Guerra Gonzalez also had to recover from flipping her boat in the solo competition to make the finals. But unlike the Hungarian, that came in her quarterfinal against Switzerland’s Tanya Brendle, where losing the race would have meant elimination.
“You do have to be crazy,” she said later. “When I flipped, you have to fight and keep going and these are the challenges the sport brings with it.”
“I still won the race where I flipped, I was so confused, but I kept going thanks to the adrenaline.”
Spain’s Blanca López picked up bronze in the B final against Czechia’s Marie Zavadilova. In that race, Zavadilova fell backwards in her boat when a wave crashed into her at the start, and seemed to trail López throughout. But Zavadilova had a faster final sprint on that sand and by the end just 0.2 seconds separated them at the buzzer.
Racing at Dakar 2026 may be remembered in part for difficult waves right at the transitions into and out of the boats. Throughout most of the four-day regatta, water conditions further out weren’t too difficult. But the waves seemed to suddenly break and become big right as they reached the shore, providing little opportunity to surf and tricky transitions.
Mistakes may also have influenced several key results. Molina, for example, went very wide on the return in the men’s solo gold medal match, and when he jumped from the boat, he looked disorientated as he searched for the flag he needed to run around.
In the final tally, China topped the medal table with two gold medals, followed by South Africa with one gold, and Spain with one silver and one bronze. No country managed to pick up a medal in all three events, illustrating the difficulty of the athletes in the mixed double also racing in the solos, plus the strength of the competition in general.
The full podiums from the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games were:
U18 CW1x:
- Lili Liu – China
- Carolina Guerra Gonzalez – Germany
- Blanca López – Spain
U18 CM1x:
- Callum Dreyer – South Africa
- Diego Molina – Spain
- Adam Moor – Hungary
U18 CMix2x:
- Juntao Su, Lili Liu – China
- Lukas Shoenhuber, Alena Lux – Austria
- Raphael de Boussac, Elisa Guilloton – France