Florent Manaudou signed the best world performance of the year in the 50m freestyle on Thursday during the series of the French Swimming Championships.
Under the eyes of his sister Laure, Manaudou achieved the best time in 21 sec 56, quite far ahead of the second, Maxime Grousset (22 sec 22). The best mark of 2023 was held so far by the Briton Benjamin Proud in 21 sec 71.
Manaudou had not swum so fast since the semi-finals of the Tokyo Olympics (21.53). “It’s not bad,” he smiled. “I am very happy. I had specific instructions this morning: do 95%, don’t turn my arms too fast, do 32 strokes, don’t breathe and see what happens. And it was pretty good.”
He will have to swim in less than 22.07 in the evening final to validate his ticket for the Fukuoka World Championships (July 23-30).
The 2012 Olympic champion had already been very fast in the 100m freestyle series on Tuesday with a time of 48 sec 12/100th, a time he had not achieved since 2016. He then skipped the final from the 100 m to favor the 50 m.
