Special envoy to Tokyo
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The full Olympic program
The Olympic medal table
First a one woman show, then an icy shower. While Teddy Riner watched his dreams of an Olympic treble slip away on the neighboring carpet, Romane Dicko had flown over the start of her competition in an impressive manner in the majestic Tokyo Budokan. In the manner, precisely, of his compatriot and colleague in the heavyweights, when he reigned in his category. Dicko-Riner, the rapprochement began when the first to win the title of champion of France at only 17 years old, a record of precocity in France. And since, even if she has managed, over time, to overcome the comparison, it remains in everyone's minds, as the 21-year-old young woman walks in the footsteps of the ten-time world champion. Even to the point of winning bronze in his first Games,like a certain Riner in Beijing in 2008.
At 21, she sets a date for the future and necessarily the Paris Olympics in 2024
Read also: Olympics: Golden score, waza-ari, quarter-finals ... Riner's surprise defeat on video
Impatient to do battle for her first participation in the Games, she whose vocation on the tatami mats was born in 2012 in front of her television by observing the fights of a certain Audrey Tcheuméo - world champion in 2011 and double Olympic medalist in 2012 (bronze ) and 2016 (silver) - during the London Games, the native of Clamart wasted no time on her first fight, completed in less than 30 seconds on an ippon inflicted on the Lithuanian Sandra Jablonskyte. A simple appetizer. In the quarterfinals, she found herself facing the one ahead of her by one rank in the world hierarchy, the Brazilian Maria Altheman. Except that on the tatami, the strongest was the Frenchwoman, with a waza-ari followed by an ippon in less than ten seconds, as soon as the first minute of the fight was over. A show of force.That it was then a question of confirming during the final block.
Romane Dicko ANNEGRET HILSE / REUTERS
Alas, in the semi-finals, Dicko encountered a major obstacle in the person of Idalys Ortiz, world number 1. A Cuban, however, she had beaten in Doha last January. But Ortiz, five years after giving in in the final in Rio to Emilie Andéol, did not want to see a Frenchwoman extinguish her Olympic dream once again. On a waza-ari after 2'13 '' of combat, Ortiz thus took the advantage. To never let go. Unable to find the opening, the judokate of Paris SG was reduced to heading for the small final and a duel against the Turkish Kayra Sayit (7th in the world). A one-sided fight, the Frenchwoman imposing herself on a ground immobilization after a minute. Enough to shed a few tears of joy on the tatami. Even though she had come for another metal,Dicko knows what an Olympic podium means at only 21 years old.
