2019 French Elite National Championships – 50M
- Tuesday 16th to Sunday 21st April 2019
- Prelims from 9.30am; final C from 18:00; final A / B from 18h30
- Host: Brittany Regional Swimming League
- Bréquigny swimming pool, 12 boulevard Albert 1er, RENNES
- 50m
- French qualifying rules for 2019 World Championships
- Start list: available here
- Results: available here
Day 5: Saturday 20 April 2019
It’s official. Despite a deep field of women’s 100 freestylers in France this year, with six swimmers under 55 seconds in the final, the French Federation (“FFN”) determined that its women did not satisfy the selection criteria and thus France would not field a 4×100 free relay at 2019 World Championships in Gwangju.
According to the FFN’s selection rules, the Federation would invite the first five swimmers out of 100 free heats at the 2019 National Championships in Rennes, if the add-up times from prelims of swimmers #2 through #5 were equal to, or faster than, 3:38.24.
The women’s 100 free prelims were highly competitive for another reason, as well. With Charlotte Bonnet already prequalified for Gwangju because of her top-3 finish in the 100 free at 2018 European Championships, everyone else was vying for the second individual spot on the Worlds team. To qualify, they had to swim 54.32 or better in prelims and finish in the top 2 in finals.
The same four women who finished 2nd through 5th in 2018 did so again in 2019, albeit in a different order. And they were faster. Last year’s add-up time of #2 through #5 was 3:38.58 in prelims. This year, they went 3:38.33. Although they missed the standard by .09, each of the women went faster yet again in finals.
| Prelims | Add-up time 2-5 | Final | Add-up time 2-5 | |
| 1 | Charlotte Bonnet | 53.63 | Charlotte Bonnet | 53.29 |
| 2 | Marie Wattel | 54.30 | Béryl Gastaldello | 53.84 |
| 3 | Béryl Gastaldello | 54.32 | Marie Wattel | 54.29 |
| 4 | Anouchka Martin | 54.81 | Lena Bousquin | 54.45 |
| 5 | Margaux Fabre | 54.90 | Anouchka Martin | 54.59 |
| 3:38.33 | 3:37.17 |
Also written into the FFN’s selection guidelines was Rule 2.8: “The [final] decision remains at the discretion of the National Technical Director [DTN].” This left open the possibility that Julien Issoulié might use his discretion to name the women to the Worlds team, but at a press conference at the end of finals on Saturday, Issoulié extinguished all hope with a resounding “non.” Issoulié seemed to stand on principle with his reasoning. He said in the press conference:
“We have chosen to apply a criterion that has been carefully considered. The logic for the relay is identical to that of the individual events. Going forward, what interests me is knowing what we will put in place so that our women swim faster and no longer find themselves in this kind of situation. That is the question we asked ourselves because it’s not about the World Championships in Korea, but the Tokyo Games next year.”
So the French women’s 4×100 free relay, which earned a gold medal at the 2018 European Championships with 3:34.65 (Marie Wattel 54.35, Bonnet 52.20, Margaux Fabre 54.41, Béryl Gastaldello 53.69) will not take part in the World Championships this summer.
Can’t win medals if you don’t show up. FFN brilliance. Another reason why the athletes need to be in charge.
Do you know if any of French swimmers joined already ISL clubs? I have a feeling that they would rather join Russian or some Asian pro club should they exist then London Roar 😀
Insane … but good for other nations when it comes to qualification for Tokyo.
The German relay for example is much slower (probably 3-4 seconds) but will compete at the world championships.
I understand tough selection criteria for relays (because in my opinion it makes no sense to send multiple athletes only for a relay), but in this case they would’ve had to only send 1 athlete who wasn’t qualified individually, so no big deal.
On the other hand I don’t understand ridiculous time standards for individual events. Germany also has rather tough standards, but not as insane as those GB has, for example in the women’s 50 free the time standard is 24.75 in Germany, but… Read more »
So if they aren’t swimming at the world championship how will they qualify for the olympics? I thought only top 12 teams qualified based on the world championship performance now if Francis not even having a team for the world championships it’s going to be difficult to qualify for the Olympics one would think
There is an alternate route for Olympic relay qualifying – the next 4 best teams from the pre-Olympic qualifying period (be it from Worlds or another meet) also earn invites.
This is the equivalent of saying “y’all just arent trying hard enough.” Ridiculous
it’s exactly what they were saying on the deck!!!
So I guess they hope to earn one of the 4 spots not given out at Worlds?
Cutting it thin, aren’t we
Flying to Brittany to as we speak
Bring back bobo
Don’t you have enough negative news from this championships. Bobo has never said anything positive about and never demonstrated patriotic feelings to French swimming. He is more interested in American young swimming prodigies.
I know someone else who seems more interested in American young swimming prodigies. His name rhymes with Dozhik.
That was then .. Now Yozhik is fully committed to Ledecky . & will argue anyone off the page who even suggests another . .
Katie Ledecky has never been a young prodigy. She skipped this stage becoming at once super star. As British commentator said in the middle of her first international race at the age of 15: someone who became very famous very suddenly. That’s why Boboli missed her on his radar.
Edit: It was my friend “autocorrect” who has chosen this nickname for Bobo. I liked it and decided to not correct “autocorrect” 😀
Agree it was the same last year with Dressel, from zero to hero.
Katie Ledecky was absolutely a young prodigy, and bobo was very much aware of her.
Oh, yeah. Bobo was cleverer than her coach who had no clue (by his own admission) what he had on his hands. That his 14 years old pupil is already a dominant world record level swimmer who will crash her famous opponents in her very first race leaving the Olympic silver medalist in the dust FOUR seconds behind. Sure, Bobo’s foreseen all of this and predicted on multiple occasions the bright future of this swimmer as he did in cases of Reagan Smith, Claire Tuggle, Claire Curzan, Penny Oleksiak and many others who showed outstanding adult level results in their 13-15 age group competition.
Dozhik rhymes more with Dozhdik. That is a diminutive of rain in Russian. Something that does make you wet, but doesn’t make you upset. People and especially children mostly like it. I’ll think about it 😀
Also rhymes with one of my favourite nouns, “a graduated rod for measuring the depth of a liquid, especially oil in a vehicle’s engine”.
It is very flattering. “Measuring”, “Depth”, “knowledge of the state of engine” – that are the best words that swimming observer wishes to hear about quality of his/her analysis. 😀
Interesting fact. Charlotte Bonnet was a member of all three record setting relays. The 4×200 was swam 7 years ago together with Camille Muffat.