6) Marie Josée Ta Lou
Marie Josée Ta Lou is no stranger in our Top 10 list. Nevertheless she has made a tremendous leap from last year when she finished 9th to now rank 6th in 2016. She is a very much improved athlete, and let me state here that I am a huge fan.
She used to be in the shadows of her Ivorian counterpart Murielle Ahouré, but Ta Lou has since charted her own course and emerged a good sprinter whom the world has taken notice of. She has gone on to really enhance her reputation beyond the African continent where she has had successes, winning the double at the 2015 African Games.
After finishing 3rd in the women’s 100m at the African Championships clocking 11.15s, Ta Lou ran the race of her life in the 200m days to hold off the challenge of South Africa’s Alyssa Conley to clinch GOLD in 22.81s.
Weeks after, a new Ta Lou started unfolding. One who was no longer comfortable running 11s but now broke the duck and went under 11s for the first time in her career, going on to join the elite list of female sprinters who could boast of times in the 10s range.
Ta Lou gained more prominence at the London Diamond League (DL), beating World and former Olympic champion, Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce as she raced to a Personal Best (PB) of 10.96s in the semis. If you thought it was a fluke, she proved doubters wrong as she went on to match that time within an hour as she won her first DL 100m race.
It was at the Olympics that Ta Lou really blossomed, narrowly missing out on the podium to agonizingly finish 4th having set a new PB of 10.86s, same time as Fraser-Pryce who won Bronze by virtue of having a quicker reaction time.
As though that 100m miss wasn’t painful enough, the 200m added to it. Ta Lou raced to another PB, this time in the 200m as she finished 4th in 22.21s, the best time by an African athlete in that distance this year.
You can say Ta Lou won “double -fourth”, but coming that close to a podium placement is quite commendable for the African sprinter. To show how well she has improved, Ta Lou is ranked 8th in the world in women’s 100m.
Watch out for the concluding part of this story on Friday.
