Often a medal provider for the French, swimming begins Saturday at noon (French time) for a week of competition at the Olympic Games.
Behind Florent Manaudou, gold medalist in 2012, the French delegation comes to Tokyo with many uncertainties and will count on his succession to shine.
Swimming is generally one of the favorite events of French supporters at the Olympic Games. For good reason: the French delegation has shone there in the past, especially at the London Olympics in 2012 by winning seven medals including four Olympic titles. The golden generation of Yannick Agnel, Alain Bernard and Camille Lacourt has now given way to the next generation of French swimming. If such a harvest of medals as in 2012 seems out of reach, the tricolor heirs will try to do better than Rio 2016 where the French delegation left with three medals, including two in silver and one in bronze.
For this, the best chance of the French swimming team remains Florent Manaudou.
Gold medalist in 2012 in the 50-meter freestyle and double silver medalist in Rio in 2016 (50-meter freestyle and 4x100-meter relay), the 30-year-old swimmer this year remains the figurehead of France.
Florent Manaudou's challenge
When he plunged back a little more than two years ago after an interlude in handball, Florent Manaudou announced the color: go back to the top of the Olympic podium. The 50-meter champion in 2012 and deprived of gold for a hundredth in Rio will face the American Caeleb Dressel, the favorite in individual and relay over several distances. But since the post-containment recovery, and especially in the home stretch to Tokyo, the tricolor swimmer's times have stagnated and he only ranked fifth in the European final in mid-May.
"I was fine last year (before the pandemic,
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) and (...) we had to start over on something else", recalls Florent Manaudou, resettled in Marseille full time. "I worked a lot this winter to make a good 'jump' on the lap times, it will be at the end of July", hopes the 30-something. His best chance for a medal remains the 50-meter freestyle, the only distance where he had managed to win Olympic gold.
Florent Manaudou will also be able to aim for a medal in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay alongside Mehdy Metella (29), with whom he collected silver in the event in 2016. Metella will also try to shine in the 100-meter butterfly, his speciality.
Finally, another medalist in Rio, Marc-Antoine Olivier (25), tanned in 2016 in the 10 km in open water, will also try to invite himself on the podium of the Games.
The next generation will push to win
Despite the presence of these three confirmed athletes, the French delegation arrives without any real certainty compared to the previous Olympiads. Among the 16 other sportsmen present in Tokyo, a few can still be talked about in Tokyo waters. This is the case for three of the four European champion swimmers in 2018 in the 4x100 meter relay. The winners Charlotte Bonnet, Marie Wattel and Beryl Gastaldello will be lined up for this same event in Tokyo to do better than in Rio in 2016, where they finished 7th in the final.
Charlotte Bonnet can also achieve a good individual performance over 200 meters, her favorite distance.
Just like Marie Wattel, whose goal is a podium in the 100-meter butterfly, which she won last May at the European Championships in Budapest, tied with a Greek swimmer.
These two talented swimmers failed to win individual medals in 2016. The Tokyo Games may be the right time for her to step onto the Olympic podium.
These Tokyo Olympics will also be an opportunity for the young tricolor guard to be talked about at three years of the Paris 2024 Olympiad. Jonathan Atsu (24 years old) or Léon Marchand (19 years old) are promised a great future that can already taking shape in Japan.