Hugues Fabrice Zango on how a sports psychologist made all the difference in winning Burkina Faso's first Olympic medal
"When you have your ministry, your president sometimes, the emperor of our ethnical Mossi in Burkina Faso (the most powerful traditional chief in the nation) writing to you, to tell you that you have to bring back medals..."
... Hugues Fabrice Zango, pauses, smiles, and exaggeratedly puffs out his cheeks...
"... even if you don't want to feel (the pressure), you feel it."
The reigning world triple jump champion was talking exclusively to Olympics.com at the 2024 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow in March where he had just added the indoor title to his repertoire.
The Burkinabe was commenting on how he manages the additional expectations from the "incredible" support of his compatriots after he became the first athlete from his nation to win a world title in athletics, and an Olympic medal – in any sport.
Adding a sports psychologist to his training sphere in 2019, he says, was particularly important on his road to claiming gold in Budapest in 2023 and bronze at Tokyo 2020.
"We need psychologists to learn how to breathe, how to just keep focused on what to do to win the medals, and not win the medal before doing what you need to do."
The opportunity to retain the services of a sports psychologist came after Zango was selected alongside more than 800 athletes as a beneficiary of an Olympic Solidarity Scholarship ahead of Tokyo 2020. That funding has since been increased, and extended for Zango, through to Paris 2024.
Contributing essential funding to cover an athlete’s training and competition expenses, the Olympic scholarships are available to all National Olympic Committees (NOCs), but in particular those with the greatest need.
Coming from a nation that didn’t even have a proper jumping pit, Zango had utilised all the facilities available to him to reach Rio 2016, where he gained experience but didn't make it past qualifying.
But success on the world stage was what he craved, and for that, he needed additional support from the scholarship fund.
Zango, Burkina Faso's sporting icon
Following the Olympic Games in Brazil, Zango moved to France to study electrical engineering, balancing studying and athletics all the way through to 2023, the year in which he became both a doctor and world champion.
"It wasn't easy, because you need to train and be in the laboratory to be able to do some things, because sometimes you have many things to do at the same time," he tells Olympics.com, relieved at being able to concentrate solely on athletics since late 2023. "So sometimes I skipped some competitions to be at the laboratory because you cannot wait for some tests on my machine."
After adding the services of a psychologist and a big-name coach – we'll get to that – world bronze was his in 2019, standing on the same podium in Doha alongside his inspiration and supporter, Christian Taylor of the US, who was winning the last of his four world titles.
Zango then won his Olympic medal at Tokyo 2020, delayed to 2021, and by 2022, was the world silver medallist in Eugene. The world title followed a year later.
Hence the public interest.
On landing at Ouagadougou Airport after his gold-medal-winning exploits, thousands of people were there cheering for him. He felt like a "king" he told Olympics and was "really, really happy".
"I've been received by all the authorities in Burkina Faso, and I got the biggest honour for a sportsman in Burkina Faso," he says of receiving the country's highest honorary distinction - Officer of the Order of the Stallion - for his achievements.
"I'm famous in Burkina Faso, you know," he tells us, ever-present grin in place. "Even at night when I walk like this" – he mimics shielding his face – "I need a..." he draws his finger across his lip.
"A moustache?"
"Yes, yes, a moustache."
So that's where the sport psychologist comes in, helping him manage his own, and outside, expectations so that he can perform when it matters.
But how did the sports psychologist help him exactly?
Let's take the World Athletics Indoor Championships as an example.
Letting go of fear is key, says Zango
Zango had reached the fifth round out of six in Scotland and was still sitting second behind the first-round jump of 17.35 by Algeria's Yasser Triki.
A second-round attempt of 17.33 was the closest to that point, but Zango needed more.
"When I woke up in the morning, I told myself, I don't want to go back to my bedroom without this gold medal," he says. "I really wanted it. Since my outdoor gold medal, I really wanted to get the last gold medal from World Athletics before the Olympics... but that puts you under pressure, so it's not easy to manage.
"My first jump, I just did 16.69, but this is not me. I told myself, okay just breathe and see what happened. I go back to see my coach and he told me that, yeah, this was wrong, you run like that.
"I tried, I tried, and I tried, but I took the information for my run up, for my jumping from the second jump to the fourth jump... I knew from the 17.35 that I have it in my legs, so I just have to mentally set myself to do it now.
"And, when I set myself, all the fears go, and finally, I told myself, just jump.
"It's exactly the same scenario as this summer (in 2023) when I did my best jump at the fifth, and finally I got the gold. So, I want to say that maybe the fifth and the sixth jumps are my best jumps. So, guys," he says, looking directly into the camera and pretending to talk to his competitors, "be ready until the end of the competition. You. Are. Aware."
Zango laughs as he emphasises the last three words.
His coach, to whom he turned when he was struggling to find his "fire" in the competition in Glasgow, was another benefit of being supported by the Olympic Solidarity programme, and has been another piece of the puzzle needed for Zango's world breakthrough. And it's not just any coach. It's Teddy Tamgho.
The Frenchman, the 2013 world champion, won with a distance of 18.04 metres, the sixth-best triple jump of all time. The world record, which is Zango's ultimate aim, is Britain's Jonathan Edwards' 18.29 metres, achieved at the 1995 World Championships.
Tamgho also previously held the indoor record with a mark of 17.90, secured in 2010 until it was beaten by a certain West African athlete 11 years later, with a distance of 18.07.
Untimely injuries kept Tamgho out of competing at an Olympic Games, and it is with this in mind that the 34-year-old announced in March 2023 that he was returning to the field of play to try and qualify for his home Olympic Games: Paris 2024.
Still coach to Zango, the roles also now reverse, as they help each other toward a potential showdown when the triple jump competition begins at the iconic Stade de France on 7 August.
Both need to be selected by their respective National Olympic Committees first, but for Zango, for whom the Olympics in Paris will be pretty much a home Games, the input from Tamgho has been invaluable.
"With the help of the scholarship, I had more resources to contract a more qualified coach like Teddy," says Zango. "I was able to put in place a system, which helped me train with him and do more competitions."
So what did Tamgho bring to the table exactly?
"First of all, we started to structure his training programme because he didn't have any structure in his programme," Tamgho told Olympics.com in Scotland where he was acting solely as coach for Zango.
"I tried to give him all the experience that I gathered through my career and about the experience of how to deal with the competition, how to deal with new situations, how to have more adaptation to the competition. That's the main thing that I try to provide him."
During the heat of the world title bid, those interactions did indeed prove fruitful after Tamgho could see that his charge just needed to relax. Easier said than done, so how did he do it?
"He's a visual man," explains Tamgho. "So, I'm moving when I'm talking, when I'm speaking with him, and when he looked at me, he understands why I want what I want from him. And he did the same, duplicated what I'm doing."
Zango also took a moment to remember what he'd been taught by the psychologist to make sure he reaches optimal performance during these tense moments.
"Sometimes you need to breathe," he says, "only breathe."
- Zango is an Olympic Solidarity Scholarship holder – find more information here.
* As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024.
* Click here to see the official qualification system for each sport.