Only a few days after their own country’s national championships France will play host to the 16th European Short Course Swimming Championships.
425 athletes from 35 countries will attend the competition which will be held in Chartres France from November 22-25th.
The French come into the competition with a great deal of excitement and expectation. Much of that excitement was generated in the last week after Yannick Agnel broke the world record in the 400 freestyle and Camille Muffat broke the world record in the 800 freestyle.
The expectations come after the Olympics where France outperformed all other European nations earning seven total medals (4 Gold, 2 Silver, 1 Bronze).
In the women’s events Muffat will give herself another shot at breaking both the 200 freestyle world record (1:51.17 – Federica Pellegrini, 2009) which she missed by 48 one-hundreths just days ago and the 400 freestyle world record (3:54.92 – Joanne Jackson, 2009) which she missed by one one-hundredth of a second in October.
However she will forgo swimming the 800 freestyle.
After completing a very impressive and lucrative series of World Cup events Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu looks to continue to put her diversity on display having entered seven individual events (200,400 and 800 freestyle, 200 butterfly and the 100, 200 and 400 IM).
Highlighting the men’s events will be Yannick Agnel, swimming the 100, 200 and 400 freestyle. Angel is coming off a very successful French Nationals having broken the 400 freestyle world record in a time of 3:32.25 and narrowly missing the world record in the 200 freestyle (1:39.37 – Paul Biedermann, 2009) by 53 one-hundreths of a second.
Added Notes:
This will be the first time that mixed relays will be introduced into the European Swimming Championships with both a 4 x 50 medley and a 4 x 50 freestyle relays events being swum.
On Saturday evening LEN will be honouring both Agnel and Ranomi Kromowidjojo as the European Swimmers of the Year, though Kromowidjojo will not be racing at this meet.
There will probably be world records in the 200 free and in the 400 free.
It’s perhaps the last meet with Laure Manaudou.
Florent Manaudou will swim very fast in the sprint events.
Speaking of Euro champs… Did SwimSwam miss that the last guy in this years Top 15 Recruits is going to Virginia Tech. Looks like the Hokies picked up another Big Time polish guy. He is easily the best pick-up in the ACC.
We sure did. Matty T. must’ve also missed the email we sent him two weeks ago asking him who the signing was. ;-).