"She will be everywhere with me": the French Agbégnénou back at the World Judo Championships with her daughter

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: CROSNIER Julien / KMSP / KMSP via AFP 22:34 p.m., May 08, 2023

Only ten months after giving birth, the French Clarisse Agbégnénou returns to the World Judo Championships in Doha with her daughter at her side and the desire to pave the way for other mother-judokas. "She will be everywhere with me," Agbégnénou told AFP of his daughter Athena. "I have the right to have my daughter and my companion wherever I want." Everywhere, that is to say at the athletes' hotel, in the air-conditioned stands of the Ali Bin Hamad Al Attiyah Arena, or even in the warm-up room, where judokas, coaches, sparring partners and members of the staff of the teams involved swarm every day.

Absent from the last edition of the Worlds due to maternity leave, the double Olympic champion from Tokyo, already crowned with five world crowns, signs in Qatar her great return to the world stage in preparation for the Olympic Games at home in just over a year. When her pregnancy was announced in February, the 30-year-old judoka had immediately given an appointment for those in Paris in 2024. In Qatar, she feels able to get a medal even if her post-maternity recovery has not been easy with a knee injury and especially a conflict with the French Federation about her kimono.

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"A first"

This episode now behind her, she arrives in Doha focused on the competition, which she starts Wednesday in -63 kg, and on her daughter Athena, after a first test carried out at the Grand Slam of Tel Aviv in February where everything went in a "fluid" way, she says. Like her, other female judokas have recently resumed their careers after becoming mothers. The Dutch Kim Polling, 32, or the British Nekoda Smythe-Davis, 30, also present in Doha, have for example young children.

But Agbégnénou is for the moment the only one to bring her daughter to the warm-up room. "This is a first," she said. "Before, I think you weren't allowed to go to the warm-up room until you were three years old. I think it can be good because it can open the door (for others)." "I can only thank the international federation for agreeing to have a baby in the warm-up room," she continued. "That way if I have to breastfeed, Athena can come, she can be there. Now as she grows a little, she can also be in the stands but she at least has the opportunity to come to the warm-up room if I feel the need."

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"We are leading the way"

An unprecedented situation that arouses the admiration of her teammates. "I think she's a very brave woman," says Blandine Pont, a licensee like her at Red Star in Champigny. "She's a great champion with a big mind and since she's been a mom, it's hard, it's difficult, you can see it, you can't hide it. She knows it too, but I think she is doubling down on her courage and it's nice to see. It gives envy, it's admirable."

Like Agbégnénou, Nekoda Smythe-Davis, mother of a one-and-a-half-year-old Ryia, regularly documents on social networks her return to the tatami. "If things are not seen openly, people believe they cannot be done," she said recently in an interview with the International Federation. "Once we are seen making these choices, other women who want to start a family will see that this is a possibility. We show what our body is really capable of. It also gives me the motivation to succeed. We are leading the way."