Tokyo (AFP)

The French Florent Manaudou and Maxime Grousset qualified on Friday for the semi-finals of the 50m freestyle of the Tokyo Olympics, with the 2nd and 15th qualifying times of the series.

Returning to swimming in March 2019 after two and a half years of handball, the 2012 Olympic champion and 2016 silver medalist swam in 21 sec 65, improving his best mark of the year by 2 / 100th.

Placed water line n ° 3, next to the double world champion of the distance Caeleb Dressel, Manaudou was less fast than the American (21.32), who has just pocketed the gold of the 4x100 m on Monday and in the 100m on Thursday, and is aiming for four more titles (100m butterfly, 50m, 4x100m medley and 4x100m mixed medley).

If the first races of the CN Marseille sprinter after his return had been encouraging, the pandemic put a stop to his chronometric progress: he skated this season between 21 sec 7/10 and 8/10, even chaining seven 50 m above 22 sec in May and June.

Fourth in the 100m Thursday, Maxime Grousset covered the one way in 21 sec 97, a time far from his record set in mid-June during the French championships (21.74), but sufficient to cross the mark of the series.

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Big favorite of the event, Caeleb Dressel keeps the margin compared to the 21 sec 04 achieved in June during the American selections, the best time in history outside the combination.

Thirteen times world champion since 2017, Dressel could join the American Matt Biondi (1988) and the Russian Aleksander Popov (1992, 1996) by becoming the third sprinter to triumph in the 50 and 100 m in the same edition of the Games. .

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