Clarisse Agbegnenou, French Athlete of the Year 2021 by Eurosport

FRENCH SPORT 2021

1. CLARISSE AGBEGNENOU

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

Because she ?

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

Of the 25 editorial board members who participated in the vote, 17 ranked it first. It is, therefore, with a comfortable margin that judoka ends up at the top of our ranking. A small event, as it is the first time since 2006 and with the victory of Amélie Mauresmo (who won two Grand Slam titles that year) that a woman is crowned by the Eurosport newsroom.

Clarisse Agbegnenou already had an exceptional record, but she still lacked the definitive acclaim, that Olympic title that had escaped her nose in 2016 in Rio. Money hadn’t really made him happy at the time. Since then, she has flown above the -63 kg category and was undefeated in the big championship. But everything he had accomplished in the last five years, if not since the beginning of his career, had to make sense in Japan this summer. It may not have been his last chance (he plans to return to Paris in 2024), but it was the most beautiful, the clearest, because he had mastered the subject.

That gold medal, he deserved as much for what he is now as for what he has accomplished over the years. But an Olympic title is not won on merit. She had to go find him, perhaps bearing the weight that weighed so heavily on her shoulders, as a form of obligation to win, like a competition on her foot. Of course, Tina Trstenjak, her opponent in the final, her great rival, the current Olympic champion, was not just anybody. But beating her in the fight for gold was even better. The icing on the cake.

In addition to the title, and even the titles, as she won the World Championship in June before actively contributing to the crowning of the French team at the team event in Tokyo, the consecration of Clarisse Agbegnenou will continue to be an incomparable emotion and perhaps one of the images of the year: once with the gold in his pocket, he burst into tears on the carpet, like a dam that opens after holding back stress and pressure for a long time.

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

Your year in 5 dates

June 9: In Budapest, she secures her fifth world champion title. He won all five of his fights with ippon and finished successfully in the final over Slovenian Andreja Leski.

July 5: Clarisse Agbegnenou is named standard-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, judoka Champigny converted France by winning Olympic gold in the 63kg category after taking revenge in the final on Tina Trstenjak. Now he has won it all.

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

September 29: On the set of the show C à Vous on France 5, he reveals that he has been close to death since birth. Born very prematurely to her twin brother, she had little chance of survival. «I was in a coma.They (the doctors) told my parents: ‘You have to turn it off, it’s complicated.’ My parents said, ‘No, no, no. She is a fighter, she will fight. ‘They waited a few weeks, a few days, and they came back to specialists and they said:’ Well, it’s not going to come back, let’s turn off … ‘, and at that moment I woke up.. «