Laurence Cousin

Laurence Cousin won the Worlds the year the tournament left Brazil for the first time. In August 2007, in Long Beach, California, she beat Japan’s Sayaka Shioda in the featherweight final of the division that combined brown and black belts, on a podium with Bianca Andrade and Leticia Ribeiro in bronze. She represented the Behring team.

Born on August 7, 1981, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, she did gymnastics and aikido as a child and started jiu-jitsu around 2000 at Cercle Tissier. At the Behring academy she got her purple belt in 2002 and her brown in 2004, and reached black belt in October 2005 in a ceremony with Flavio Behring and Saulo Ribeiro. At the time of her world title she was also working as a police officer.

At the Worlds she took bronze as a purple belt in 2003 and as a brown belt in 2005, and silver in 2008, losing the featherweight final to Bianca Andrade. In 2009 she won the ADCC European trials and finished fourth under 60 kg at the main event in Barcelona. A back injury kept her off the mats in 2010.

She returned to competition in 2013. She won the IBJJF Europeans in 2014 under 64 kg and the World Masters in 2015 and 2019, as well as ne-waza titles, including bronze at the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Alabama. In 2012 she founded Acemat in Toulouse, affiliated with Ribeiro Jiu-Jitsu since 2014.