Athletics: Kène Ndoye, former Senegalese jumping specialist, is dead

Senegalese athlete Kene Ndoye at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham, March 14, 2003. © DAMIEN MEYER / AFP

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Former Senegalese athlete Kène Ndoye, a specialist in the triple jump and long jump, died at the age of 44 on the night of February 13 to 14, 2023. For ten years, she had been battling polyarthritis, a degenerative disease.

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With our correspondent in Dakar,

Kène Ndoye will be remembered as one of the figures of Senegalese athletics for being on the podium twelve times at the African Championships.

At only 18, she won her first international medals and from her first participation in the African Championships, in 1996 in Yaoundé, she won gold in the triple jump and bronze in the long jump.

Performances that she often repeated in subsequent editions.

Kène Ndoye won a total of 12 medals at the African Athletics Championships, a record.

In 2003, at the indoor worlds in Birmingham, the Senegalese won bronze in the triple jump, which made her the third best athlete in Senegal behind Amadou Dia Ba (silver medalist in the 400m hurdles at the Seoul Olympics, 1988) and Amy Mbacké Thiam (400m world champion at the Edmonton Worlds, 2001).

Kène Ndoye still holds the Senegalese women's triple and long jump records.

She had been sick for several years.

Lacking financial means, she kept asking for bonuses owed to her by sports leaders, according to her.

I share the pain of the family and loved ones of Kéne Ndoye, an internationally renowned sportswoman.

I pay tribute to a high-level athlete, several times African champion.

My heartfelt condolences to his family and to the sports world.

pic.twitter.com/LtM0m7IYnv

— Macky Sall (@Macky_Sall) February 14, 2023

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