The French cyclist, aged twenty, won the rainbow jersey on Saturday, in the 500-meter ladies event, which is not on the Olympic Games program.
Le Monde
The “general rehearsal” envisaged, less than two years old from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, takes place perfectly for French cyclists. One day after the coronation of Mathilde Gros speed, another representative of the young guard of the tricolor track made French colors shine on Saturday October 15. Just twenty years old, Marie-Divine Kouamé won the world coronation on 500 m ladies in a Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome acquired in her cause.
In this event not on the Olympic program, the young Frenchwoman, second in qualifying in the morning, achieved the best performance in the final (32,835 seconds), ahead of the German Emma Hinze and the Chinese Yufang Guo. French champion of the discipline, the cyclist from Coudray-Montceaux (Essonne) takes the rainbow jersey for her first participation in the Worlds.
masterful 🤩
@Mariedivine91 is 500m world champion for her very first championship 🌈
#Sqy2022 https://t.co/umkbabtfox
“The objective is to be efficient in this world championship, it was the objective of the year, and at home, trying to make the French vibrate a little,” warned Marie-Divine Kouamé, questioned by Direct Vélo , before competition. Among the spearheads of the young generation of the tricolor sprint, the young woman wanted to “prove that our team speed holds up and that we can count on us and trust us for the Olympic Games.”
The young sprinter succeeds Felicia Ballanger, last Frenchwoman crowned world champion 500 meters (in 1999). And one day after the first title of the Blues in the National Velodrome, which will host the tests in 2024, the Frenchwoman showed that it was necessary to count with the French Sprint in the feminine.