After passing the first two rounds of the world championships, Clarisse Agbégnénou, six-time world champion and title holder, was eliminated by the world No. 1 in the quarter-finals on Tuesday.
:quality(50)/2024/03/22/logosport1-65fdc209c3726464026706.png)
Published
Update
Reading time: 1 min
:quality(50)/2024/03/25/053-ar-20240312154155-kinq1-67d49053-20-154155186-6601d9eb397e8124345296.jpg)
She dreamed of a seventh world crown, a second in a row. But six months after her failure in the European Championships repechage, Clarisse Agbégnénou fell again, losing in the quarter-finals of the World Championships in the -63 kg category, Tuesday May 21 in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates). ), against Canadian Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard, world No. 1.
The Frenchwoman was defeated on waza-ari, knocked to her side one minute from the end of the fight. She was never able to reverse the trend against an opponent she had defeated in the semi-finals of the Games in Tokyo and in the quarter-finals of the 2023 Worlds, on the way to her sixth coronation. Previously, she had easily dominated the Polish Natalia Kropska then the Japanese Megumi Horikawa, 2022 world champion against whom she remained in a difficult fight, at the Paris tournament in February, won after more than 12 minutes, including eight in overtime.
The 31-year-old Frenchwoman can aim, at best, for a bronze medal in the repechage final, after her victory on ippon against Croatian Iva Oberan. It’s a setback for the woman who dreams of adorning herself with gold in Paris during the Olympic Games in two months, and who had put her career on hold in 2022 in order to have a child. However, she won the Grand Slams in Paris and Tashkent at the start of the year.
