Marie-Josée Ta Lou

Gonezie Marie Josée Dominique Ta Lou-Smith (née Ta Lou;) (born 18 November 1988) is an Ivorian sprinter competing in the 100 metres and 200 m.

By coincidence, Florence Olonade, the Ivory Coast 100 m champion in 1988, was a classmate of Ta Lou's mother, and invited Ta Lou for a trial.

She beat the girls who trained under Olonade in a 200 m race, even though she was running barefoot and had not had time to prepare.

Originally, she could not train regularly, as she had to study for her high school diploma.

Her mother was also against it, because she believed there was too much uncertainty in sport, particularly women's sport.

She wanted Marie-Josée to become a doctor.

Ta Lou quickly progressed onto the national team.

By the end of June 2007 she was part of the Ivorian 4 × 100 m team that won bronze at the West African Championships in Cotonou, Benin.

She then made the Ivorian team for the African Junior Championships in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

She finished last in her 100 m heat, with a time of 13.21 seconds.

In September 2007, she won her first national 100 m title in a time of 12.9 seconds.

Ta Lou began studying medicine after finishing high school.

Ta Lou first passion was association football before her elder brother convinced to change to sprinting in 2008.

In 2008, she won both the 100 m and 200 m at the national championships.

She repeated this feat at the 2009 National Championships.

That year, she finished seventh in the 200 m at the 2009 West African Championships in Porto-Novo, Benin, with a time of 25.67 despite a 1.8 m/s headwind.

Because it was hard to combine athletics training with medical school, she switched to accounting and finance.

Her coach, Florence Onolade, also made a sacrifice, sending the promising young athlete to a coach with more experience, Jeannot Kouamé, so that Ta Lou could progress further.

In 2010, Ta Lou made her first impact on the international scene, finishing second place in the 100 m at the international Gabriel Tiacoh meet in Abidjan in a time of 12.10 seconds.

In June 2010, she again won both the 100 m and 200 m at the national championships.

She then competed in her first senior African Championships, finishing sixth in her 100 m semi-final in a time of 12.16 seconds.

She also ran in the 200 m heats.

At the end of that summer, she was awarded a 4-year sports scholarship in China, by the Ivory Coach Athletics Federation.

Her coach, Jeannot Kouamé, had pushed her to apply for the scholarship, as he could see her potential but felt she could not fulfill it if she stayed in the Ivory Coast.

In 2011, in August, she took part in the World University Games in Shenzhen, China, in both the 100 m and 200 m. She lowered her personal bests to 11.87 seconds and 24.17 seconds respectively.

She was also a double finalist at the All-Africa Games in Mozambique.

She also set a new 100 m personal best of 11.56 seconds in the heats.

In 2012, she won a bronze at the African Championships in Porto-Novo, Benin in the 200m (23.44) and in the 4 × 100 m. She was also fourth in the individual 100 m. She set a new personal best in the semi-final, 23.26 seconds.

This also meant she had achieved the B standard for the Olympic Games.

Ta Lou and national teammate Wilfried Koffi (who would become double African champion in the 100 m and 200 m in 2014) moved to Shanghai at the end of the summer.

Unfortunately, the scholarship was unsuccessful because the course she wished to attend, physiotherapy, was not offered to foreign students and the only course that was offered to the scholarship students was Mandarin.

Foreign athletes were also only allowed to take part in the early rounds of athletics competitions.

She was voted the 2015 African Athlete of the Year by the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa.

She trained in Paris, France, and studied medicine at the Université d'Abobo-Adjamé in Abidjan.

Ta Lou's played football at school in the neighbourhood of Koumassi, a suburb of Abidjan.

Her brother objected when a women's team tried to get her to join them, fearing that she would turn into a tomboy.

Friends of his suggested that if his sister enjoyed sports, she should take up athletics, as she was already regularly beating the boys in her class in sprints.

She finished fourth in the 100 metres and 200 metres finals at the 2016 Olympic Games, missing out on a medal in the 100m by seven-thousandths of a second (0.007).

She then won silver medals in the 100 metres and 200 metres at the 2017 World Championships, the latter in the national record time of 22.08 seconds.

Her 100 metres best is 10.72 seconds (2022), thus making her the African record holder.