Tokyo (AFP)

Clarisse Agbégnénou, crowned Olympic champion Tuesday in Tokyo, has made a place for herself at the top of French judo in the space of an Olympiad and has the will to assert herself also beyond the tatami mats.

The Olympic gold conquered, additional satisfaction, against the Slovenian Tina Trstenjak who had beaten her in the final in Rio in 2016, was the last consecration she lacked to win, at 28, as the French judoka in the prize list on most imposing in history.

With five world champion crowns, the four of the ending Olympiad (2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021) and a first in 2014, plus two silver medals (2013 and 2015), she was already the fighter most successful blue 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, Agbégnénou's fighting spirit was severely tested.

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 Agbégnénou 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.

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

"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.

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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".

Agbégnénou, "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.

Olympic silver from Rio, "this is not the right medal for me", thus retains Agbégnénou, 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.

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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 confessed before the Games.

To recover from it, Agbégnénou, always eager for discoveries and travels, chose to break a routine: morally loose, she flew to Reunion during confinement, took up yoga and boxing. and jujitsu, also following a life coach training at HEC.

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

But these extra efforts were well worth it.

© 2021 AFP