After being thrown in the air by an immense opponent, Japanese wrestler Shogo Uozumi lay face-down in a dirty alleyway in Thies, Senegal.
Uozumi got up, dusted off, and rejoined the loinclothed wrestlers.
Uozumi smiled, battling again. Last year, he moved from Tokyo to Thies to learn Senegalese Laamb wrestling and teach local wrestlers Olympic Greco-Roman.
“Every time I train, I feel myself getting stronger,” he replied, gasping. “I feel a lot of joy and growth within me.”
Lamb, a post-harvest sport, is Senegal’s national sport. It combines acrobatics and physical combat to win by touching an opponent’s back.
Uozumi found the type of wrestling on a 2017 trip to Senegal with Japan’s aid agency and was interested in cultural parallels, including hospitality, known as Teranga in Senegal and Omotenashi in Japan.
In 2022, Uozumi moved to Senegal’s third-largest city, Thies, to live with a wrestling community. He also runs a three-dozen-student academy for the 2026 Youth Olympics.
“He showed me what it means to commit oneself, to leave one’s country without being well-paid, knowing that he would only have enough to live on, to develop our sport,” said Laamb wrestler and Uozumi’s close friend Cheikh Badiane.
“I’ll help him.”
Uozumi and Badiane taught their wrestlers from the sidelines last month in Saint-Louis, Senegal’s colonial capital.
Their pupil won silver in her weight class.
“Senegalese people live together, with their families, their friends, and they all support each other in this way,” Uozumi stated upon returning to Thies. “That’s my kind of culture.”
