Tokyo (AFP)

Clarisse Agbegnenou, flag bearer of the Blues alongside Samir Aït Saïd at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games on Friday, has made a place for herself at the top of French judo in the space of an Olympiad and has the will to also assert itself beyond the tatami mats.

She only lacks Olympic gold - she will fight Tuesday in -63 kg, five years after the Rio silver - to impose herself, at 28, as the French judoka with the most prestigious prize list in history.

With five world champion crowns, the four from the Olympiad which is coming to an end (2017-2019 and 2021) and a first in 2014, plus two silver medals (2013 and 2015), she is already the blue fighter la most successful at the Worlds.

Only the essential Teddy Riner, with ten coronations conquered between 2007 and 2017, does better on the men's side.

From her birth in the fall of 1992, two months before her term, Agbegnenou's fighting spirit was severely put to the test.

Reanimated as soon as she came into the world with her twin Aurélien, she spent her first four weeks in an incubator, fed by infusion.

Then a kidney malformation required an operation "when she weighed only two kilos", tells her mother Pauline Agbegnenou in L'Équipe.

"And she fell into a coma. She was there for seven to eight days."

- Very premature -

“When she woke up, with a deep breath, I remember the doctor saying my daughter was a fighter,” she continues.

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His gnaque, the one we nickname "Gnougnou" also explains owing to his childhood in the midst of his three brothers spent in the Paris region.

"It can only forge you. You're the only girl, you have no choice: you have to wage war on them, otherwise you will get eaten up!", She launches.

Directed towards judo at the age of nine to channel her boundless energy, the young Clarisse finds her way there.

At fourteen, she left the family home for the France pole of Orleans.

Then three years later, in 2009, she joined Insep, the breeding ground for French sports champions.

At the 2010 and 2011 Worlds, his first two senior international selections came to an end.

The third, in 2012, is the right one: she obtains European bronze before she turns twenty, then European gold and world silver the following year.

And her first world gold in 2014, at age 21, as she hoped loud and clear: "Frankly and without having the bowler, I do not see myself not being world champion this year".

Agbegnenou, "she is a model in her determination, in the way she fights. And in life, it's like a big sister", describes the 2019 world champion of -70 kg Marie-Eve Gahié.

- "Culture of winning" -

"I do not need to transmit the culture of winning to her, she has it", summarized to AFP before the Worlds-2019 Larbi Benboudaoud, who follows her since her debut in Blue and now director of high performance of French judo.

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Olympic silver from Rio, "this is not the right medal for me", thus retains Agbegnenou, whom Benboudaoud describes as a "bulldozer" on the carpet.

His commitment and energy are overflowing with dojos.

On the social networks that she uses intensely, "Gnougnou" documents her life at 100 per hour and highlights the causes to which she is sensitive, that of women in particular, she who participated in the development of menstrual panties with a specialist brand or featured on the front page of L'Équipe Magazine for a feature on sportswomen's breasts

An obstacle, however, has wavered its trajectory so controlled since the start of the Olympiad: the eruption of Covid-19 and the consecutive postponement of the Olympics.

"I was really devastated. I cried a lot," she admits.

To recover, Agbegnenou, always eager for discoveries and travel, chose to break the routine: loose, she flew to Reunion Island during the confinement, took up yoga, boxing and in jujitsu, and, three days a month, follows a life coach training at HEC.

"One more year is a very long time," she repeats.

But her quest for Olympic gold keeps her going.

© 2021 AFP