2023 FRENCH ELITE CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Sunday, June 11th – Friday, June 16th
- Rennes, France
- LCM (50m)
- World Championships Qualifier
- FFN Selection Criteria
- Meet Central
- Entries
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- Day 1 Prelims Recap / Day 1 Finals Recap
- Day 2 Prelims Recap / Day 2 Finals Recap
- Day 3 Prelims Recap / Day 3 Finals Recap
- Day 4 Prelims Recap / Day 4 Finals Recap
- Day 5 Prelims Recap / Day 5 Finals Recap
- Live Results
- Live Stream
Leon Marchand was entered in the men’s 100m butterfly as his sixth event at these French Elite Championships but the 21-year-old wound up not standing behind the blocks for the race this morning.
In Marchand’s absence on this final day of this World Championship trials competition, it was Maxime Grousset who topped the heats, punching a time of 51.71 as the top seed.
Already for Grousset, that’s a new personal best, slicing .01 off of his previous PB of 51.72 nabbed at the Giant Open this past March. Behind Grousset was Stanislas Huille who earned the 2nd seed in 52.47 while Charles Rihoux placed 3rd in 52.49.
Of note, Olympian Mehdy Metella rebounded from a 6th place finish in the B-Final of the men’s 50m fly to snag the 6th seed in this 1fly in 53.11.
As for Marchand, the Arizona State University star owns a lifetime best of 52.44 in the 1fly, a time he registered in Spain last year.
Even without this 100m fly event, Marchand has done plenty of damage while competing here in Rennes. The versatile wunderkind has nabbed World Championships berths in the 200m breast, 200m fly, 200m free, 200m IM and 400m IM.
Quitter! You sign up for it, you swim it. SIMPLE!!
He signed up, paid the sign up fee, and frankly can do whatever he wants. He’s a grown man who can make his own decisions and if he’s tired at the end of a 5 day masterclass of a meet, he can drop out of an event that isn’t his specialty. It’s not like he NS’ed the A final.
And while I’m here, don’t act like you’re better than him because he “quit”, cause that seems to be what you’re implying here. Take a chill pill and realize that these are the decisions of someone who wants to be fully prepared to repeat as world champion and possibly break the oldest standing world record in the books. If he has… Read more »
There is literally no point in swimming it. He clearly wasn’t in the best shape anymore near the end of his events so doing this one would not benefit his performances this summer. The 100 fly is also definitely not a main event for him. Swimmers do this all the time when there is no point in swimmng an event, and there is nothing wrong with it. He isn’t taking away someone else’s spot by not swimming a heat. if you don’t know anything about swimming you might as well shut up.
Still wondering when the alien will be called back to his home planet.
Clearly a superb swimmer on the international scene.
However, I’m not sure the World Championships format of races will play to all his many skills.
ditto, for Paris 2024.
What a great problem to have. Truthfully, the flexibility and range of events he has should lend itself to a very long career.
We need to scrap semis in all events 200 and above. I would keep them for 50s and 100s maybe.
ABOLISH SEMI FINALS!
Aw. After seeing his sprint capabilities at NCAAs I was looking forward to this one. Remains undefeated at least though!
Given the potential in the test of the field I think it would be close but I still think he would’ve won unless he started really running out of gas. I think if all things go well he’ll probably still swim the leg in the medley relay like last year.
Absolutely no chance from him to beat Grousset.