“
My world title (in 2019) and European ones (in 2018 and 2020) were more stages than an end in itself.
My goal is the Olympic Games.
A bit like Clarisse Agbegnenou - Rio's revenge - less, Madeleine Malonga feels invested with a mission in Tokyo.
For these first Games, the judokate does not come to participate.
Not even to get on the second or third step of the podium.
What she wants is gold.
All in all, logical for a 27-year-old athlete who has dominated her category in the head and shoulders for three years.
World number 1 with a very comfortable margin over her runner-up, the Japanese Shori Hamada, the Frenchwoman is not invincible, however, as demonstrated by the recent world championship during which she was beaten in the final by the German Anna Maria Wagner. (waza-ari during the golden score).
To discover
The full Olympic program
The Olympic medal table
A little booster shot may be beneficial before the Games for her, who explained in Budapest, just after this defeat: “
It's top-level sport.
You can't win all the time, that's a shame.
But we learn more from the defeats, it seems.
So I must have learned something today.
So we have to digest and start again.
And then I also tell myself that by not being in my best shape, I am still second and that I will be more ready and sharp in six weeks.
"Out of the question for her to doubt more than measure, even if the loss of the red bib is a disappointment, she knows that there is"
something much
higher
to go for this year.
"
The painful departure from the family cocoon
This Olympic dream, Malonga - who started judo at the age of 8 to accompany a friend - has really fed him since she was 14, when she chose to join the hopes pole of Amiens, thus leaving her family cocoon of Chambly. A
difficult
choice, as she explains to the official Games website: “
It was a very young age and it was difficult to leave the family home. That's why I didn't want to leave at the start. But my father explained to me that it was a chance and that if it did not go well, they could come and get me. Then I had my parents on the phone every night.
Three years later, in 2010, she took a further step by integrating Insep. Since then,the way to the Games was clear.
Still a little too tender for Rio, especially since in her category of less than 78 kilos there was a certain Audrey Tcheuméo, world reference and future Olympic silver medalist in the city of Carioca, Malonga quickly set Tokyo as a goal. So much so that on August 30, 2019, when she won the world title here, in Tokyo, in the majestic Nippon Budokan, the Frenchwoman had already made an appointment: “
Winning in Japan was close to my heart. I hope that in a year, in the same place, it will also be gold.
She had hardly conquered her first world title than, already, the judokate of the sports star of Blanc-Mesnil. Difficult to make more explicit about his immense patience to enter the running on Thursday.
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