Saint-Raphaël (France) (AFP)

Béryl Gastaldello took pole position to qualify as quickly as possible for the Tokyo Games by winning the 100m final under the required time at the French Swimming Championships on Thursday in Saint-Raphaël.

Gastaldello (25) won in 53 sec 40, thirteen hundredths faster than the minimum time required (53.53), ahead of Marie Wattel (53.72) and Charlotte Bonnet (53.82).

It is the first in all races to succeed in meeting this chronometric criterion.

It is not automatically qualified for the Olympics-2020 postponed by one year, however.

For this, she must remain the fastest French swimmer over the distance until the end of the first Olympic qualification window, which has just opened and which will not close until March 21, 2021, according to the new system set up by the tricolor frame.

Not enough to upset her.

"Nothing is played" but "I do not feel on an ejection seat, I will keep my place", launches the sprinter installed in Texas, still deeply consumed by the depression in early 2018.

Rising value of French swimming for two seasons, but which had previously distinguished itself in short course, at the European Championships in Glasgow in December 2019, as during the two seasons of the ISL private league, Gastaldello confirms his good dispositions from the moment.

All the more promising as it has accumulated considerable fatigue during the six weeks of the ISL health bubble between mid-October and the end of November.

- "I surprised myself" -

"I surprised myself. Because we are not going to lie to each other, this morning (54.43 in the playoffs) it was a little complicated", she admits, explaining having "completely disconnected" since the end of the ISL.

"I didn't expect to swim that fast (in the final). I'm proud of myself. It proves that my job pays off, and that I manage to transfer it from small to deep, which is important for them. Games, "says Gastaldello.

For Bonnet, the reunion with the competition, after ten months of withdrawal, the fault of the Covid-19 pandemic, did not go as she would have liked.

"Clearly, I am seriously lacking in benchmarks, in races with competition, recognizes the one who was five times national title holder in the 100 m. I find it difficult to apply what I was able to work on in training, as much on technique as on strategy. "

"But it's not over. It's a very special year and we'll have to bounce back quickly," she continues on the eve of plunging back into the 200m, her favorite race, the one which crowned her the champion of 'Europe in 2018.

After a rather encouraging first start in the morning in the 100m butterfly series (52.81), after a year without competition and a left shoulder operation in January - which had put him out of the Games before the postponement of a year - , Mehdy Metella did not have the resources to accelerate in the final.

On the contrary, he swam five hundredths slower (52.86).

- Metella a year later -

Impossible to know more about his feelings after his first two races in long course since the Worlds in Gwangju (South Korea) almost a year and a half ago, since the 28-year-old Marseille sprinter, who released very gradually at the beginning of June, crossed the mixed zone without responding to journalists.

As benchmarks, the time to pocket a ticket for Tokyo from the end of March on the distance is set at 51 sec 73, and his French record established in 2019 is 50 sec 85.

If Metella was however crowned champion of France in the 100 m butterfly in the Var basin, the 2017 world bronze medalist in the 100 m was followed by a young talent of French swimming, Léon Marchand, author of the best French performance of the 18 years in 52 sec 89.

Place Friday at the most anticipated meeting of the competition, the 50m with Florent Manaudou, returned to the pools twenty months ago with the ambition to win back Olympic gold in the one way.

These French Championships, usually scheduled in the spring, were exceptionally rescheduled in December under the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic.

© 2020 AFP