Triple Olympic medalist in individual, Florent Manaudou has already lived several careers and now seems guided by a key word: serenity. A philosophy to test on Friday at the Fukuoka World Swimming Championships. “It’s nice to see him like that, to see him confident and to see him enjoying his races, it’s great”, recently observed his sister Laure, impressed by the longevity at the high level of her little brother. “He’s had a long career. To see that he is still there is admirable for a swimmer.”
Arriving in Japan, the 32-year-old Frenchman is third in the world rankings for the year in his favorite race, the 50m freestyle with a time of 21.56 achieved at the French Championship last month in Rennes. He hadn’t swum so fast since the Tokyo Olympics (21.53) two years ago. Two days earlier in Brittany, he had also been very fast in the 100m freestyle with a time of 48”12, a performance he had not achieved since 2016. It was the time of his first career before a two-year break in the hand and a return to the basins in 2019.
These results, in clear progress compared to the World Championships in Budapest where he had achieved only the eleventh time of the semi-finals, he explains them quite easily: “I trained, a little”, he says in smiling. “Last year I didn’t train too much. Finally, it’s not that I hadn’t trained but I had taken a year a little halfway. It was a different year”. This break was necessary to “release the pressure a little” and find his marks in his new environment, he assures. Because after the Tokyo Olympics, where he had been the only French swimmer to climb on a podium, Manaudou had completely changed his living environment to go and train near Antibes under the direction of a tandem of coaches. , Quentin Coton and Yoris Grandjean, who are also close friends. Since then, the experienced Briton James Gibson has been added to the staff.
“There, I trained very well, I have much more confidence, serenity in what I do, serenity in what I can do. It will be nice to see what it can give,” he said. The Frenchman had begun to experience this tranquility on the Mare Nostrum circuit in the spring with good results in front of a raised plateau. He was already talking about “the serenity and confidence” that this competition had brought him.
One year before the Olympic Games at home, Manaudou has therefore gotten back in working order to gain momentum before the last big challenge of his career. But beyond a medal in Paris, Laure’s little brother dreams of this meeting to be able to communicate with the French public. “In twelve years of the France team, I have only experienced one international competition (in France), the European Short Course Championships in Chartres in 2012. It’s a bit old,” he remarks. “Most of the team’s swimmers have not experienced international competitions on French soil. It’s something different, something exciting that can give us that extra bit of soul. That’s what makes me dream beyond the result: to be able to share with the French public who don’t often see us swimming on our soil.”
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