Clarisse Agbegnenou crowned French sportswoman of the year 2021 by Eurosport

FRENCH SPORTS 2021

1. CLARISSE AGBEGNENOU

Sport: Judo
Number of points: 241
Number of citations: 25
Best ranking: 1st (17 times)
Ranking 2020: –

Why she ?

In this Olympic year, places were expensive. Especially when, outside the arena of the Games, several French champions have marked the history of French sport in their respective disciplines, whether it is Alexis Pinturault, Fabio Quartararo or even Julian Alaphilippe. The competition was tough, but Clarisse Agbegnenou finally got everyone to agree, and quite clearly.

Of the 25 members of the editorial staff who took part in the vote, 17 placed her in first position. It is therefore with a comfortable margin that the judokate finishes at the top of our ranking. A small event, since it is the first time since 2006 and the victory of Amélie Mauresmo (who had won two Grand Slam titles that year) that a woman has been crowned by the editorial staff of Eurosport.

Clarisse Agbegnenou already had an exceptional track record but she still lacked the ultimate consecration, this Olympic title which had slipped under her nose in 2016 in Rio. Money had not really made him happy at the time. Since then, she flew over her -63kg category and was undefeated in the big championship. But everything she had accomplished over the past five years, if not since the start of her career, had to make sense in Japan this summer. It was perhaps not her last chance (she intends to return to Paris in 2024), but it was the most beautiful, the clearest, as she had dominated her subject.

This gold medal, she deserved it as much for what she is now as for what she has accomplished over the years. But an Olympic title is not won on merit. She had to go get him, perhaps bearing the weight that weighed on her shoulders as much, that of a form of obligation to win, as that of a competition to her boot. Of course, Tina Trstenjak, her opponent in the final, her great rival, the reigning Olympic champion, was not just anyone. But beating her in the fight for gold was all the better. The icing on the cake.

Beyond the title, and even the titles, since she had won at the World Championships in June before actively contributing to the coronation of the French team in the Team Event in Tokyo, there will remain consecration by Clarisse Agbegnenou an incomparable emotion and perhaps one of the images of the year: once the gold in her pocket, she burst into tears on the tatami, like a dike that opens after having held back the stress for too long and pressure.

On his face was then measured the sum of efforts made, these thousands of hours to suffer, to prepare, to materialize in the space of a handful of minutes. This is the life of a champion, where dreams are precarious and hypothetical. But when they come to life, as for Clarisse Agbegnenou on July 27, 2021, their strength has something incomparable, even for us, who apprehend them only from afar.

His year in 5 dates

June 9: In Budapest, she secures her 5th world champion title. She won her five fights by ippon and ended with a success in the final over the Slovenian Andreja Leski.

July 5: Clarisse Agbegnenou is appointed flag bearer of the French delegation in Tokyo for the opening ceremony, along with gymnast Samir Aït-Saïd.

July 27: Four days after the opening ceremony, the judokate from Champigny capsized France by winning Olympic gold in the under 63 kg category after taking revenge in the final on Tina Trstenjak. She has now won everything.

July 31: Second gold medal for Agbegnenou, this time in the team event, where she brings a point in the final by beating the Olympic champion of 70kg, the weight category above hers, the Japanese Chizuru Arai.

September 29: On the set of the show C à Vous, on France 5, she reveals to have come close to death from birth. Born very prematurely with her twin brother, she had little chance of surviving. “I was in a coma.They (the doctors) said to my parents: ‘You have to unplug it, it’s complicated.’ My parents said, ‘No, no, no. She’s a fighter, she’s going to fight. ‘ They waited a few weeks, a few days, and they came back with specialists and said: ‘Okay, she’s not coming back, we’re going to unplug her …’, and at that moment, I woke up. “