one year before the Paris 2024 Olympics, the Blues are back in the deep end in Japan

2023-07-22 20:00:09
Léon Marchand during the 200-meter breaststroke series of the French swimming championships, in Rennes, June 11, 2023. DAMIEN MEYER / AFP

Tokyo, summer 2021. French swimming hit the bottom of the pool. Only one medal brought back from the Olympic Games by his colossus, Florent Manaudou, over 50 m (three individual Olympic charms in as many editions) who, by adorning himself with silver, avoids the zero point. But the 2012 Olympic champion alone cannot prevent the worst record for the French team since the Sydney Games in 2000.

Already mired in controversies and internal wars during the sinking in Rio in 2016 – to the poor sporting performances, with only two medals in the Carioca basins, there were added settling of accounts between swimmers and coaches – French swimming is only a shadow of itself. The golden age (between 2004 and 2013) is well and truly over.

Since then, the Blues have lifted their heads above water: 8 podiums (3 for girls, 5 for boys), including two coronations, at the World Championships in Budapest in June 2022, then 13 medals, including three in gold, at the European Championships, in Rome, a few weeks later. The tricolor delegation – 21 individual swimmers, 32 in total counting the relays – is coming to the world championships in Fukuoka (from July 23 to 30) with the ambition of confirming the momentum started and the promises, one year from the Paris Games. Even if the competition should logically be denser as the supreme deadline approaches, despite the absence of Russian and Belarusian swimmers for the second consecutive year.

Also read the interview (2019): Article reserved for our subscribers Florent Manaudou: “I don’t want to be seen as the savior of the France team”

In Japan, “The objective is to put the most people in the final. The real performance indicator is the number of finalists before the Games, insists Julien Issoulié, the national technical director (DTN). When you look at history and statistics, the medalists of the Worlds are not necessarily the medalists of the Games, but the medalists of the Games are in general in the finalists of the Worlds”.

Florent Manaudou’s last challenge

Led by their new locomotive Léon Marchand, crowned in Budapest double world champion in the 400m medley and 200m medley, and vice-world champion in the 200m butterfly, the French clan is aware that the safest route to Paris 2024 goes through a successful stopover in Japan.

At 32, Florent Manaudou has embarked on the last challenge – at home – of his swimming career. Returning empty-handed from Budapest and plagued by doubt throughout 2022, the captain of the Blues reassured himself by succeeding during the French championships in Rennes in mid-June, the best performance of the year over 50m (21 sec 56), before the Australian Cameron McEvoy (21 sec 27) and the American Ryan Held (21 sec 50) did better during their respective selections.

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