Marie-Josee Ta Lou: Daring to dream
The Ivorian is in admirable shape as she looks to better her double sprint silvers from the 2017 World Championships and become the greatest African female sprinter in history. Can the 13-time African medallist finally clinch the gold that has eluded her at worlds and the Olympics?
Athletics
Marie-Josee Ta Lou is a dreamer who is inspiring a continent, and she is tipped to change Africa’s sprinting history forever.
For the last 13 years, the Ivorian has been a model of consistency in the international sprinting scene.
Her double silvers at the 2017 World Championships are the highlights of her career, punctuated by heartbreaks of just missing out on Olympic medals at Rio 2016 and at the Tokyo Olympics.
Unbeaten in nine 100m starts this year, a lot of focus has been on the former footballer with the 2023 World Championships in Budapest fast approaching.
Her fifth consecutive worlds present a great opportunity for Ta Lou to show her champion pedigree.
No African woman has won the 100m or 200m at the Olympics or World championships.
The biggest accomplishments of female African sprinters besides Ta Lou are Nigeria’s Mary Onyali’s bronze at the Atlanta 1992 Olympics and Tobi Amusan's gold in the 100m hurdles at the 2022 World Championships in Oregon.
Marie-Josee Ta Lou competing at her second Olympics at Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Japan.
Marie Jose Ta Lou’s switch from football to track
Ta Lou’s sporting career began on the football pitch while schooling in her home capital, Abidjan.
She was even spotted by a local women’s team who tried to draft her, but her brother wouldn't let her sister play a ‘boyish’ sport.
"My older brother did not want me to carry on with football, fearing that I would become a tomboy," Ta Lou told World Athletics.
Her brother was convinced that her sister could make it on track as she was constantly outsprinting her male teammates on the football pitch.
She remains a big football fan and a huge supporter of English Premier Leagie side Chelsea, where her compatriot Didier Drogba played for nearly a decade.
While she was still in high school, Ta Lou - running barefoot - defeated girls who were training to be national sprinters in a 200m race in 2008.
The switch was paying off, but it did not go unchallenged.
Her mother, who raised her and her other three siblings single-handedly, wanted her to go to university and study medicine instead of pursuing a career as an athlete, especially as a female sprinter, which was uncommon in Cote d’Ivoire.
The former striker was keen to realise her mother’s dream and even accepted a sports scholarship to pursue studies at the Shanghai University.
“When I started, my mother didn't want me to do it," she told Olympics.com in an interview just before the Tokyo Olympics.
“And people around me said, 'You are from Africa, I don't think you will become someone. I want you to continue your studies, to work in an office'. But I felt because I like to run so much. This is my way.”
“My results at the 2012 African Championships had made me realise that I had the potential to become an elite sprinter. Things did not work out for me [at the University] and I decided to return to Cote d'Ivoire."
She took bronze in the 200m and in the 4X100 m relay at the African Championships held in Benin.
Ta Lou then joined the IAAF High Performance Training Centre in Dakar and began teaming up with her long-term Ivorian coach, Anthony Koffi whom she worked with until 2022, before leaving home to seek guidance from American John Smith.
Smith previously coached Olympic and three-time world champion Carmelita Jeter.
Marie-Josee Ta Lou on forgetting the near misses at the Olympics
Showing promise in her continental and global races, the 34-year-old was even awarded an Olympic solidarity scholarship to prepare for the Rio 2016 Games where she qualified for both the 100m and 200m finals. She finished fourth in both.
The West African star was deeply disappointed for missing bronze in the dash where she was judged to be just seven thousands of a second behind Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce as they both tied at 10.86 seconds.
“I want to forget Rio. But Rio gave me self-confidence, experience and motivation to return to training and work hard,” she said.
The 2017 World Championships remain one of her best events to date as she won her first career medals-just losing the 100m gold to American Torie Bowie who lunged at the finish line.
In the 200m, she again lost “her best race so far” in a close dash to Dutch athlete Dafne Schippers.
Returning to her second Olympics in Tokyo after the bronze at the 2019 World Championships, the 13-time African medallist’s hunger for glory was evident.
She fell short again despite a steady and impressive series of runs leading up to the Olympics.
Before Tokyo, the African record holder had made the podium of each of her 100 or 200m races that she started, besides the Diamond League opener in Doha, where she’d placed fourth.
“When I was young, I was dreaming of doing something different. I want to leave a big legacy. Not only for Ivorian girls, but for all African girls. I want to show that they can do something big if they believe in themselves,” she told Olympics.com.
2023 and a decade of top-level running for Marie-Josee Ta Lou
2023 could just be her year to finally realise some of her long-time career goals by winning gold medals in both the 100m and 200m.
She made a statement at the 2022 Diamond League race in Monaco, running a personal best of 10.72 seconds to finish third behind the winner Fraser-Pryce [10.61].
Her time is the seventh-fastest of all time. What made the run and her African record even more exciting was that Ta Lou saw it coming.
"I asked God what if I run 10.72 [as a birthday gift for my coach] on his 72nd birthday?" she recalled in a video chat.
Ta Lou, who is now mainly based in Los Angeles with her new coach, is enjoying a good run of form and she is nearly fully healthy.
The veteran sprinter has always battled some form of discomfort for most of her career, starting with the chronic backache resulting from her spine's curvature, knee, hamstring and shoulder injuries.
“All my career I have always run with injury, [but] you never see me show that I am in pain. I am always at 50%. What has helped me is my faith in God, because he cannot put me through what I cannot endure and overcome,” the sprinter shared in April just before she kicked off her season.
“You have to keep pushing and believing that God will lead you where you need to be. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes before my races I'd cried the whole night, but you will always see me smiling, it’s not because I don’t have any major problems.”
A decade of running and running fast Ta Lou feels she can perform even better and lay down a serious marker as she targets the “gold and the world record”.
“I want to be the greatest sprinter in Africa,” the current world leader with her 10.75 from Oslo on June 15 told Olympics.com.
“I want to leave a big legacy. Not only for Ivorian girls, but for all African girls. I want to show that they can do something big if they believe in themselves.”
“When they see how I started and who I am today, that gives them hope. This is an opportunity for the youngsters to believe in themselves. I want to show them that they can do whatever they love and achieve great things.
“It’s nice to see people who want to take a picture with me, who want to become like me. But I tell them they should not want to become like me, rather greater than me.”