Fate is a joker. Friends outside the tatami mats, Romane Dicko and Julia Tolofua are fighting a fierce battle to represent France at the Paris Olympics in the +78 kg category. Only one of them will have this privilege, and if we thought the dice were thrown, Saturday’s day at the Doha World Championships reshuffled the cards.
Dicko, crowned world champion in October in Tashkent, indeed started with several lengths in advance, but she could see her place threatened after her surprise elimination, as soon as she entered the running, by the Italian Asya Tavano.
First world final for Tolofua
“The race is not over, but it is sure that it can score points today,” she acknowledged about Tolofua, after his elimination in the middle of the day. The sequel indeed proved her right, since the Wallisian, after a crazy adventure, climbed to the world final for the first time in her career.
Admittedly, she lost after more than seven minutes of an interminable fight against the Japanese Akira Sone, the Olympic champion, but Tolofua (25) inflated her CV and gained experience.
“I would have liked to do more, to go stronger, confided Tolofua, in tears, at the microphone of La Chaîne L’Équipe after his defeat. I would have preferred to have the gold, but I’m having a great day. And then, losing at the golden score is always better than taking a box. »
“It was not really the planned plan”
The time was not, for her, to project herself on the Olympics. Simply to digest the disappointment of a narrowly lost final against the reigning Olympic champion, who was a pin figure next to her colossal physique (1.89 m and not far from 130 kg). The identity of the elected for Paris 2024 will be decided by an independent internal committee, which will decide according to the performance of the two judokas over the year.
The verdict should be given at the beginning of next year and the decision will not be easy. Depriving the 2022 world champion and reigning three-time European champion (2018, 2020, 2022) of the flagship competition would be, for the native of Clamart, particularly difficult to take. How delicate it would be to deprive ourselves of the services of Julia Tolofua, now entering the big leagues with her world silver medal.
“There are three French women in the world’s top 8, not counting the young Coralie Hayme, who recently beat the reigning Olympic champion”, confessed recently to World Christophe Massina, head of the French women’s team. “It was not really the planned plan, we were thinking more of a Franco-French semi-final”, he admitted, moreover, on Saturday, before the Tolofua final.
The two French women had found themselves at this stage of the competition during the previous Worlds, in a duel to the advantage of Dicko for what represented, until then, the best performance of Tolofua, bronze medalist.
It is possible that this Olympic stake trotted in the final corner of the head of the judoka with red and black dye in what could be a nod to his cousins Selevasio and Christopher, rugby players in Toulouse and Toulon.
