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Ruth Gbagbi is not the type to boast. But this Tuesday, November 30, at the Taekwondo Palace in Abidjan, the Ivorian athlete willingly takes a few dance steps to the sound of songs and maracas from the handful of Ivorian supporters who have come to welcome him. “Champion, have a good arrival oooh, champion a safe arrival oooh! “, they proclaim in chorus. National flag on the back and gold medal around the neck, she celebrates with them her second title of world champion obtained on November 27 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The taekwondo, now number two in the world ranking under 67 kg, won in the final against the French Magda Wiet-Hénin (11-5), European champion 2020 in Sarajevo. “I fought with my experience, my calm, my techniques, I worked on the strategy to win”, she analyzes, happy but tired after these championships organized in the Saudi dampness.
This medal gleaned during the first world taekwondo championships exclusively for women adds to the beautiful collection of the 27-year-old Ivorian star. Five-time African champion, double world champion therefore and double bronze medalist at the Olympic Games, she is today one of the most successful sportswomen in the country, behind several disabled athletes including the unbeatable runner Oumar Koné and her 83 medals.
Iron discipline
This concludes a very good year for Ruth Gbagbi, also bronze medalist at the Tokyo Games this summer, a performance that she considers “Satisfactory” despite the announced hopes of Olympic gold. His trainer Adama Chérif is harder: “We stumbled in Tokyo, we had to start again, luckily there was this competition just after. “
The season had started in earnest in June with the national team in the mountains of western Ivory Coast. An unprecedented physical preparation at an altitude of almost 1,000 meters, far from the tatami mats of its training center in Mallorca, Spain. And the Ivorian air seems to please her since she had already returned to her land to prepare for the 2019 season after a serious forearm injury. At the time, it also paid off: she had become world number one a few months later.
Thanks to his preparation and an iron discipline, his track record grows and his determination is only strengthened. “I know I can do even better, she believes. Winning an Olympic gold medal, winning even more world titles, grand prizes, being first everywhere in fact. “
As on the carpets where she impresses with her speed and ability to move, Ruth Gbagbi is constantly moving forward. “If you stay to glorify yourself after a victory, be sure that you will not move forward, launches as a maxim Adama Chérif. It is thanks to this character that she is constant, she opens a new page each time. “
This state of mind is the fruit of the teaching and values of South Korean sport, exported to Côte d’Ivoire in the 1960s when master Kim Young Tae came to train Ivorian masters. “Asia and Africa have a common character, compares Adama Chérif. In these cultures, we rely on respect for elders. And this is Ruth’s strength: she is very attentive, she has confidence in herself and she works. “
A radically different temperament from the more rebellious one she had as a child in the streets of her Koumassi neighborhood in Abidjan. “When I was little, I missed school, I hung out in the neighborhood, I liked playing video games and I fought a lot. When I was 9, my mother told me that she was going to enroll me in taekwondo so that they could hit me, she laughs again. Now it’s the opposite, I’m a champion and she’s proud of me. “
Second sport in the country
The martial art gave him discipline and a way to channel himself: “Now I can manage my emotions. As soon as I arrived in the national team, it was the routine: ‘“training, studies, rest”, “training, studies, rest”. It framed me and allowed me to be who I am today. “
The one who started very young with football has the same idol as the vast majority of Ivorians: the international Didier Drogba, with whom she sometimes exchanges. In turn, she begins to make a name for herself. “People recognize me more than before, they give me a little more importance”, she feels. These days, we can even see his face in the streets of Abidjan, plastered on buses and billboards. “She is a model, she is very ambitious, optimistic, humble, she goes for it, Côte d’Ivoire is proud of her”, launches Denise, member of the animation committee of Ivorian athletes.
Proud of her country and active on social networks, she is widely followed by Ivorian youth, who today rush to taekwondo clubs across the country to follow in her footsteps. In Côte d’Ivoire, the number of licensees continues to grow: from 16,000 to over 46,000 in ten years, making martial art the second sport in the country after football.
His success as well as that of Cheick Cissé, Olympic champion in 2016 in Rio, have a lot to do with it. And if Ruth Gbagbi has not finished winning titles, she is already preparing the next generation: “I have to share my experience with the youngest so that they can exceed the level I have today”, hopes the champion. Humble in all circumstances.
