MEETING NATIONAL DU NANTES
- Saturday, January 23rd – Sunday, January 24th, 2021
- Nantes, France
- Long Course Meters (50m)
- Start Lists
- Results
Jérémy Stravius and Grégory Mallet each made an appearance this weekend at the two-day ‘Meeting National du Nantes’. Both Stravius and Mallet were a part of France’s silver medal-winning 4×200 freestyle relay at the 2012 Olympics where they, Amaury Leveaux, and Clément Lefert joined the Americans (gold) and Germans (bronze) on the podium.
Stravius retired from the sport in January 2020 and Mallet retired back in 2016 but both made a just-for-fun comeback this weekend.
The duo went head to head in both the 50 and 100 freestyles with Mallet taking the win in both, hitting times of 23.43 in the 50 and 52.24 in the 100. Stravius on the other hand was second in the 50 with a 23.94 and fell to fourth in the 100 as he swam a 52.60, behind Mallet’s winning 52.24, Nathanael Soulard’s 52.40, and Maxence Orange‘s 52.53.
Mallet also raced the 200 freestyle at the meet, finishing fourth with a 1:57.65 behind winner Nathanael Soulard (1:53.36), silver medalist Marin Debril (1:56.28), and bronze medalist Simon Clusman (1:57.58). Stravius’ third event on the other hand was the 50 fly in which he was second with a 25.97 behind Jeremy Houot’s 25.58 and ahead of Alexis Soulas’ third place 26.26.
Maxence Orange also delivered some solid backstroke performances, picking up victories in both the 100 and 200, along a 5th place in the 50. In the 100, he swam a 55.45 and in the 200 a 2:01.36, a little bit over his respective best times of 54.28 and 1:58.72. Orange qualified first into the 50 backstroke final with his prelim swim of 26.84 but then dropped to a 28.61 in the final for fifth.
On the women’s side, sprinter Alexe Herthe notched 5 top-3 finishes this weekend. Herthe won the 50 freestyle (26.99) and 100 butterfly (1:03.47), took second in the 50 backstroke (31.34), and was third in the 100 freestyle (1:00.84) and 50 butterfly (29.69).
Cassandre Huguet displayed her freestyle versatility at the meet, picking up victories in the 100 and 800 freestyles (59.14 / 9:04.70) and silver medals in the 50 and 400 (28.04/4:26.62).