2025 French Elite Championships: Day 3 Prelims Recap ...Middle East

By Mark Wild on SwimSwam

2025 FRENCH ELITE CHAMPIONSHIPS

The third prelims session of the 2025 French Elite Championships saw a wide variety of events, as the prelims of the 200 fly (women and men), the men’s 100 free, the women’s 200 free, the women’s 50 back, and the early heats of the men’s 800 took place.

As a reminder, Leon Marchand is absent from this meet, having been granted a special dispensation to qualify for the team at the Texas Longhorn invite, where he swam the 400 free, 200 breast, and 400 IM, meaning as it relates to this morning, no 200 fly, despite being the reigning Olympic Gold Medalist in the event.

The results this morning went as one would expect with the French stars performing well in their stronger events.

The men’s 100 free, one of France’s strengths, saw Olympic Finalist Maxime Grousset blast his way to a sub-48 time. The CS Clichy 92 swimmer was out quickly in 22.62 and kept form on the backhalf to touch the wall in 47.69. The time is faster than his 47.71, which was good for his 5th-place finish in Paris last summer. 2nd this morning was Rafael Fente-Damers. A Texas commit, Fente-Damers, last summer qualified for the Olympics in the event but suffered a dislocated shoulder from celebrating his 48.14. This morning, he was 48.20, which, like Grousset, was faster than his Olympic swim. He swam a 48.82 in the prelims to tie for 23rd place. The pair were the only two under the French Qualifying time of 48.34 this morning.

The women’s 50 back was also this morning, one of the strengths of the French women, as they advanced two swimmers into the 100 back final last summer. That said, neither of those swimmers will be involved in the field tonight. Lead the charge, and the top seed tonight is Mary-Ambre Moluh.

Moluh just finished up her first season swimming for Cal in the NCAA, where she finaled in the 100 back at NCAA, placing 7th. Last summer, Moluh was a part of France’s 4×1– free relay in Paris. This morning, she hit the wall in 27.68, just .05 off her PB set back in 2022. Her performance undercut the qualifying time of 27.7, but it is not fait accompli as the national record holder, Analie Pigree, is tonight’s 3rd seed, with Pauline Mahieu sandwiched in between.

The 200 events will be more difficult to find qualifiers for. In Marchand’s absence, Clement Secchi posted the top time in this morning’s 200 fly, as he stopped the clock in 1:59.91, but will have much further to go if he wishes to swim the event in Singapore as the qualifying standard sits at 1:55.78. The women’s 200 fly is a similar situation as Thailand’s Kamonchanok Kwanmaung posted the fastest time this morning of 2:12.04. Behind her, Soizic Gelfmann and Lilou Ressencourt represented the top two French swimmers, as they recorded times of 2:12.94 and 2:13.32, respectively. Both will be chasing the 2:08.43 qualifying time.

Up against a 1:57.26 qualifying time in the 200 free, the French women will be hard-pressed to get an individual qualifier. Albane Cachot leads the way with her 2:00.14 prelims swim. She has a PB of 1:59.18 from April of this year but would need to drop an additional two seconds to do so. The French women placed 14th last year in the 4×200 free relay, but it is yet unknown if they will try to swim it in Singapore.

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