France’s Olympic champion Yannick Agnel and Camille Muffat will both make their post-Olympic debuts at the Berlin stop of the 2012 World Cup, the second of the three European legs of this year’s 8-meet series.
According to the federation, the pair will be swimming at the Berlin stop of the meet (historically the most exciting), and with both still unlisted on the entry lists for Stockholm this coming weekend, it would mark the debut of both swimmers since the training partners combined for 6 total medals (3 of them gold) in London.
Update: The pair will swim at the Aqua Deus le Puy event this weekend prior to heading to Berlin, along with Mireia Belmonte-Garcia.
At the Games, Agnel showed the incredible effects of his relatively-recent focus on speed by winning the 200 free and putting up a huge come-from-behind anchor leg on France’s 400 free relay to lift them past the Americans to victory. Muffat had a crazy season where she swam with some of the most incredible back-halfs we’ve ever seen in the sport, but ultimately at the Olympics rode fairly vanilla pacing to a gold medal in the 400 free and a silver in the 200.
In other notable news, South Africa has pulled their three superstars from the Stockholm stop of the meet that begins Saturday. That means that Cameron van der Burgh, already champion of four events, Chad le Clos, the defending series champion, and Roland Schoeman will all be sitting that meet out after having initially been entered. We’re working on gathering more information why, as the news was announced only in a brief press release by the Swedish Swimming Federation.
We’re working on gathering more info on why those three men have pulled out. In this year’s series, with so many athletes committed to the full series, it will be a tall task for any of them to earn their way back into the top three and the big cash prizes. Le Clos currently sits 3rd, Schoeman 6th, and van der Burgh 9th in the overall standings. Their countrymate Darian Townsend was not specifically mentioned in the release, and is still listed as being entered. He currently sits 5th overall.
The american junior swimmers wiil have tough opponents in Moscow and in Berlin. But it will also help them to swim faster.
Chad and Cameron pulled out of the world cup tour. Getting back to SA for training