Without putting his yakitori to cut, we could believe in blue-white-red medals for the second morning of finals in the Tokyo basin.
However, we had to be content with two sixth places for Marie Wattel (100 m butterfly) and the men's 4 x 100 m NL relay.
Always on the verge of tears, but it's a habit, Wattel does not want to be too disappointed with a race where his French record the day before (56′'16 against 56′'27 in the final) would not have him allowed to stand on the podium. “The standard is extremely high. Normally with 56′'2, you are on the podium at every major Championship. But I learned a lot of things, slips the sprinter from CN Marseille. I can only be happy with myself. I must not be too greedy, it's still very good. Today, I want to dream, I want to believe that I can be 55 ′ '. On one of my pool shoes, there is Tokyo written, on the other Paris. "
#EnDirect # Tokyo2020 #final swimming
of the 4x100m NL men
The French 🇫🇷 (Maxime Grousset, Florent Manaudou, Clément Mignon and Mehdy Metella) finished 6th in 3: 11.09 # TeamFFN #Allezlesbleus
📸 KMSP / S.Kempinaire pic.twitter.com/ AJ6jqV2lBi
- FFN (@FFNatation) July 26, 2021
The torchbearers would have been medalists for sure in the 3 x 100 m. But Mehdy Metella did not keep pace in the final while Maxime Grousset had launched France perfectly by facing the American Caeleb Dressel on the first stint. “It's my big comeback at a high level,” says Metella. It's a bit hard to do both (crawl and pap) when you come back from an injury Obviously, I haven't worked the crawl too much. The weak point was me. You can spit on me, I'll let you, but for a day or two no more! "
Overall, the tricolor quartet (Grousset, Manaudou, Mignon, Metella) is rather satisfied. “It's mixed. On the one hand, we always want to do better and the final was really open. We could have grabbed a small podium so there is a bitter side, explains Mignon. But after Rio, the relay broke up, it faltered and in the end, in four to six months, we recreated a dynamic more than correct but which is not enough to bring back a charm. It takes longer than expected to create a new wave. We are in the infancy, it can only go faster. "
Florent Manaudou took the opportunity to get in the water before the 50m NL at the end of the week. “Two lengths is a bit long,” jokes the 2012 Olympic champion, extremely relaxed. It was frankly a good relay of the four of us. It's a shame that we can't manage to take a short walk. We knew we had to swim 47.5 on average, we were a little too slow in quotes, but it's better than what we did in France, frankly we have no regrets… ”