Tokyo (AFP)
Big favorites and led by their star Caeleb Dressel, the Americans won the 4x100m relay on Monday ahead of the Italians and Australians, while the French took sixth place.
Double Olympic relay champion in Rio, thirteen times world champion since, the Floridian sprinter began his golden harvest as soon as he appeared in the Tokyo basin, he who was still aiming for the 100m, 100m butterfly and 50m titles, and those of the 4x100m medley and 4x100m mixed medley.
The Americans completed the distance in 3:08:97, far ahead of the Italians thrown by Alessandro Miressi (3: 10.11), and the Australians by Kyle Chalmers, the reigning Olympic champion in the 100m (3: 10.22).
Vice-Olympic champions in 2016, the French were still second halfway through the race, Maxime Grousset jumping into the wave of Caeleb Dressel before Florent Manaudou, for his return to the relay since the silver medal in Rio, follows Blake Pieroni .
But Clément Mignon then Mehdy Metella could not resist the flight of Bowen Becker and Zach Apple in the neighboring lane, nor the return of the Canadians and Hungarians, only managing to get ahead of the Russians and Brazilians.
Titled at the London 2012 Olympics, the French men's 4x100m comes out of a transition Olympiad after bringing together a generation of world-class sprinters, who amassed a dozen medals in major championships.
This relay climbed on all the international podiums in the long course between the 2008 Olympics and those of 2016. Then it experienced a low point in 2017, not qualified for the Budapest Worlds, then orphaned by Florent Manaudou and Fabien Gilot in particular, a first since 2005.
Eliminated in the series at the 2018 European Championships, the Blues raised the bar two years later in Gwangju (South Korea) by slipping into the final, finishing in last place.
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