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It is a mark of the standing in which Florent Manaudou is held that the veteran swimmer was selected as the first man to carry the Olympic torch when it arrived on French soil in May. The 33-year-old is again the figurehead of home hopes in the pool, even with Leon Marchand’s emergence as a potential multi-stroke successor to Michael Phelps.
Manaudou carried the tricolore at the opening ceremony along the River Seine alongside discus thrower Melina Robert-Michon, the French flag safe in the hulking freestyler’s huge hands. 12 years have passed since he first shot onto the scene at London 2012, a 21-year-old suriving the so-called “splash and dash” to touch the wall first and secure 50m freestyle gold.
If you were to sculpt an ideal swimmer, it would probably look a lot like Manaudou. Broad shouldered and long-limbed at six-foot-six, he was born to a French father and Dutch mother in the south of France and is the second of two Olympic gold-medal winning siblings. Elder sister Laure secured her freestyle gold over 400m in Athens, and made a surprise comeback ahead of London to compete alongside her little brother, memorably embracing him after his shock win.
The 50 free is notoriously unpredictable, the cut and thrust of such a quickfire event meaning a single misplaced stroke can cost a swimmer’s medal chances. But Manaudou has made a habit of peaking at the right time. Silver medals have followed in his preferred event in Rio and Tokyo, the Frenchman each time narrowly beaten by American opposition, with a 4x100m freestyle silver from Brazil an added bonus.
To make a fourth Olympics is a remarkable achievement for a man once labelled as “the swimmer who doesn’t like swimming”.
Between his two individual silvers, Manaudou left the sport entirely to pursure a brief professional career in handball with Aix-en-Provence, just a short way up the road from Marseille, where he also opened a restaurant. The 33-year-old is also a self-taught guitarist and astronomy enthusiast, picking up the latter hobby during lockdown.
“When he has decided something, he does everything to achieve it and generally he achieves it easily,” sister Laure observed in an interview with Le Parisien. “He is determined. He is capable of doing great things in everything, so he gives himself the means to succeed. I don’t think it really requires any effort from him...”
Now he goes in search of another Olympic crown with the backing of a home crowd behind him. Swimming can be a young man’s games but Manaudou is ageing impressively, clocking a new personal best in the 100 metres freestyle at the French trials and recording his fastest 50 free in eight years ahead of Paris 2024.
He will have to be at his best. The final in Paris should feature as many as five world champions in the event, with Manaudou joined by Great Britain’s Ben Proud, Ukraine’s Vladyslav Bukhov, Australia’s Cam McEvoy and America’s Caeleb Dressel. It promises to be a brutal battle for sprint supremacy.
“London was my childhood dream, to discover what the Olympic Games were all about and to compete there with my sister,” Manaudou reflected to Le Monde ahead of a home Olympics. “I want this to be a grand finale and to be able to enjoy it with the French public.
