Manaudou won in 21 sec 73, below the 21 sec 80 set.
However, the 2012 Olympic champion and 2016 Olympic vice-champion in the 50 m is not automatically qualified for the 2020 Olympics postponed by one year.
For this, he must remain the fastest French swimmer over the distance until the end of this first Olympic qualification window, which has just opened and which will close on March 21, 2021, according to the new system set up by the tricolor frame.
In the morning series, Manaudou was nine hundredths behind the requested time (21''89).
Laure's younger brother returned to swimming twenty months ago with the ambition to win back the Olympic gold in the 50m, after more than two and a half years away from the pools, from the post Olympics-2016 to the spring of 2019 , notably spent in handball.
Manaudou had only been swimming in the Var basin for his fifth and sixth 50m long course since his return.
His first two date back to June 2019, in Rome, after only ten weeks of training, the next two to last January, in Luxembourg, before the Covid-19 pandemic took hold.
Seven months before the Tokyo Games, his best performance since he plunged again remains his 21 sec 56 swam in the final in Luxembourg.
The French Championships, exceptionally rescheduled in December because of the Covid-19 pandemic, mark the starting point of the race for Olympic tickets for blue swimming.
At the end of this first three-month period, those who have achieved a time corresponding to an entry in the world final will get their sesame from the end of March, within the limit of one qualifier per race.
The last sesames will be distributed in a second time at the 2021 French Championships, in mid-June in Chartres, according to less precise chronometric minima, and within the limit of two qualified per race.
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