The “dress rehearsal” envisaged, less than two years from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, is going wonderfully for French cyclists. One day after the coronation of Mathilde Gros in speed, another representative of the young guard of the tricolor track made the French colors shine, Saturday October 15. Just twenty years old, Marie-Divine Kouamé won the world title in the women’s 500 meters in a velodrome in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines committed to her cause.
In this event not on the Olympic program, the young Frenchwoman, second in the qualifications 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 in the discipline, the cyclist from Coudray-Montceaux (Essonne) dons 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 perform well in this world championship, it was the objective of the year, and, at home, to try to make the French people vibrate a little”warned Marie-Divine Kouamé, questioned by Bike Direct, before the 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 be counted on and trusted for the Olympic Games”.
The young sprinter succeeds Felicia Ballanger, the last Frenchwoman crowned world champion in the 500 meters (in 1999). One day after the first title of the Blues in the national velodrome, which will host the events in 2024, the Frenchwoman showed that it was already necessary to reckon with the French sprint for women.