Guediawaye, Senegal

Photographer: Christian Bobst

Year of Submission: 2016 (Educators Edition) 

Lac stands before Dakar’s Mar Diop stadium, the site of his 2003 knockout victory over the Commando.

At Lac’s school, wrestlers spend months training for fights, usually training for hours each day.

Traditional forms of wrestling are found throughout West Africa. But nowhere is the sport more popular than in Senegal, where its version – known as laamb – even beats out football, and top fighters can earn as much as several hundred thousand dollars a year for a single bout. Across the country, Lac de Guiers is famous for his 2003 victory over the Commando, a much taller adversary who at the time was one of the country’s best-known wrestlers. Today, Lac runs his own wrestling school in Guédiawaye, a town near Dakar, the country’s capital, passing on his knowledge to young men eager to become professional wrestlers.