***Special guest blogger Guillaume Deutsch reports from the French National Championships
First day in Angers, France for the French Nationals 25m. The day before, swimmers arrived in town, discovering the pool. No big gain in this meet, 5 days before the Euro in Croatia. The question was: would Laure Manaudou come? ... After her discouraging Olympics in Beijing, and a new coach in the city of Marseille, was she able to swim at international level again? She showed up in Angers for the press conference, where she declared "I love swimming in Marseille. I am not the star anymore, Fred Bousquet, Fabien Gilot and Greg Mallet (3 of the 4 swimmers of the 4x100 free relay) are now the leaders". " I feel good to swim, but my goals remain the 50m season".
Alain Bernard, and Amaury Leveaux are also here. The meet should be fast, and things starts tommorow with the 50 free.
50 free women:
Alena Pochenka ( world gold medalist) is still a vaillant competitor, although she retired. Best time with 24.98. Also qualified is Laure Manaudou, 8th, in 25.91. According to Fred Vergnoux,
Alena's coach and husband," she became better and better the less she swam... we plan
together to swim in Masters meet in January for fun, but if she is still fast, maybe we will change our mind."
50 free men:
21.00 for Fred Bousquet, new championship record. "It's time to swim fast, morning or evening, I don't care."
Amaury Leveaux, 21.16, Fabien Gilot 21.23 and Alain Bernard 21.52 easy.
*** Look for more from Guillaume in the next couple days!
Alain Bernard above...
LAURE MANADOU speaks at the press conference, French National Championships
Fred Bousquet, the Frenchman with the best tats (ink) in the swimming world.....
i love Manaudou and Bernard! definitely looking forward to see what these two end up doing. thanks for the updates :)
Posted by: crystal | December 05, 2008 at 08:24 PM