Reigning Olympic champion in -63 kg, Clarisse Agbegnenou won on Saturday in the capital by defeating Croatian Katarina Kristo. In the -70 kg category, Marie-Eve Gahié and Margaux Pinot won silver and bronze.
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Four medals on Friday, three on Saturday… French judokas are celebrating this weekend at the Accor Arena for the Paris Tournament, which brings together the world’s best specialists each year in the capital. After the gold medals won by Shirine Boukli, Luka Mkheidze and Faïza Mokdar on Friday, it was the unmissable Clarisse Agbegnenou who came to win a new coronation on Saturday February 3. To complete it all, Marie-Eve Gahié and Margaux Pinot also managed to win two medals, in silver and bronze.
Agbegnenou joins Décosse and its seven coronations in Paris
Taking a closer look at the day of the reigning Olympic champion in the -63 kg category, everything was not easy for Clarisse Agbegnenou. Easy for her first fight against the German Agatha Schmidt, the six-time world champion needed almost nine minutes in the golden score to bring down the Japanese Megumi Horikawa, 2022 world champion, during her second duel. She received a third penalty for lack of fighting spirit and allowed the Frenchwoman to continue her road to the title.
Her perfectly controlled quarter-final against the Cuban Maylin Del Toro Carvajal foreshadowed the best, then the Dutch Joanne van Lieshout again pushed the Habs to the golden score, for almost four minutes. But more was needed to shake “Gnougnou”, who took the upper hand and reached his first final in the tournament after four years of absence.
Opposed to the Croatian Katarina Kristo, who was going very low in the legs, Clarisse Agbegnenou held on despite the penalties and finally won after two minutes in the golden score. Mentally, she joins Lucie Décosse in the rank of the most successful judokas in the competition and strikes a first big blow in Paris, less than six months before the Olympic Games.
Gahié and Pinot are content with the podium
In the -70 kg, another particularly scrutinized category with good chances of medals on the French side, Marie-Eve Gahié and Margaux Pinot did not disappoint, and gold was not that far away.
Beaten at the end of the suspense by the 2021 and 2022 world champion Barbara Matic, Margaux Pinot fought hard to reach the final for the bronze medal. Led by the young Portuguese Tais Pina (19 years old), the Olympic team champion in Tokyo managed to reverse the trend, winning with a perfectly distributed ippon.
A few moments later, Marie-Eve Gahié took over in the final, with the wish of winning her first title in this home tournament. But that was without counting the perfect counter from the German Miriam Butkereit, which put an end to the dream of the reigning European champion. The tournament ends on Sunday in Bercy, where Teddy Riner, Audrey Tcheuméo, and Romane Dicko will aim for the gold medal.