Prague (AFP)

By each offering their second European coronation, Romane Dicko (+78 kg) and Madeleine Malonga (-78 kg) concluded an unprecedented female raid at the European Judo Championships, Saturday in Prague.

The French fighters got their hands on five of the seven categories.

Never before have the Bleues won so much European gold in a competition of a comparable format.

Promising eight months from the Tokyo Games postponed to summer 2021 (July 23-August 8) under the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Reassuring, too, after a year largely turned upside down and shortened by the health crisis.

Dicko and Malonga, both crowned for the first time in 2018 but who remained for more than nine months without competition, imitated the young Shirine Boukli (-48 kg), Clarisse Agbegnenou (-63 kg) and Margaux Pinot (-70 kg) , which had been adorned with gold before them in the Prague room.

Adding the bronze obtained by Sarah-Léonie Cysique (-57 kg) and Marie-Eve Gahié (-70 kg), seven of the nine French judokas leave the Czech capital with a medal around the stroke.

Only Mélanie Clément (-48 kg) and Astride Gneto (-52) did not glean any.

On the men's side, on the contrary, in the absence of the reigning double Olympic heavyweight champion and ten-time world champion Teddy Riner, the honor is only saved by Kilian Le Blouch, bronze in -66 kg.

None of the seven other blue fighters engaged even won more than one fight.

In total, the French delegation ends the three days of competition, its last in 2020, with eight medals.

- Dicko undefeated in 2020 -

Dicko, 21 years old for less than two months, becomes the second youngest blue judoka (behind Catherine Pierre in the 1970s) to already have two European coronations.

Above all, she continues her revival, and the rapid rise in the world hierarchy that goes with it, after being deprived of competition for a year and a half, between mid-2018 and last November, because of a double injury to a shoulder and one knee.

Obviously the outbreak of the new coronavirus has changed everything, but Dicko still ends 2020 with a clear round, after his victories at the Tel Aviv Grand Prix in January and at the Paris Grand Slam in February.

So that it will settle at the gates of the top 15 in the world ranking.

In four fights on Saturday, Dicko offered himself two members of the world top 10, the Turkish Kayra Sayit, beaten by waza-ari, and the Bosnian Larisa Ceric, defeated on penalties, and one of the top 5, the Azerbaijani Iryna Kindzerska, dominated by ippon in less than two minutes in the final.

For Malonga (26), this reconquest of the European crown, one year after having been crowned world champion and while she is world No. 2 in her category, is one more step towards her first Olympic experience.

Her two competitors for the only sesame at stake, Fanny-Estelle Posvite, world No. 3 but hit in a shoulder, and Audrey Tcheuméo, double Olympic medalist but left with a long delay, did not fight on the Czech tatami mats.

In the final, Malonga was able to control an opponent against whom she had experienced three of her four defeats in 2019, the German Luise Malzahn: she imposed herself on penalties after three minutes of fighting.

She had won her two previous fights by ippon, after a slower start (penalties).

Riner absent, the heavyweight category gave rise to a 100% Russian final, snatched by Tamerlan Bashaev at the expense of Inal Tasoev.

© 2020 AFP