Maxime Grousset, during the 50m butterfly semi-finals, Sunday July 23 in Fukuoka (Japan). FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT / AFP
In the middle of the afternoon on Monday July 24 (Tokyo time), lightning suddenly struck the Marine Messe aquatic complex in Fukuoka (southwest of the Japanese archipelago), which hosts the world swimming championships until Sunday. A few hours later, Maxime Grousset made a length of pool at lightning speed to win bronze over 50 m butterfly. The Frenchman swam in 22 seconds 82. He was only beaten by the Italian Thomas Ceccon (22 seconds 68) and the Portuguese Diogo Matos Ribeiro (22 seconds 80).
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The day after Léon Marchand’s resounding title of world champion in the 400m medley – erasing the last record held by American legend Michael Phelps – his 24-year-old compatriot also made a successful entry into the running.
And it doesn’t matter that the event counts almost for nothing, since it is not on the program of the Olympic Games. “If I am world champion, so much the better. It’s a bonus. I’m here to compete.”, summarized Grousset, Sunday July 23, after his semi-final. The Frenchman had already been a silver medalist over the distance at the European Championships in Rome in August 2022.
Michel Chrétien’s protege entered his competition with a bang, improving his French record in the series on Sunday morning (22 seconds 74), ratifying it by sixteen hundredths, stealing the French record in passing, owned since 2009 by Frédérick Bousquet, equaled by Florent Manaudou during his world title in 2015. “And I don’t intend to stop there”, had warned, with a smirk, this fake dilettante, leaving the basin. Without any bravado: the big burly (1.92 m for 92 kg) did it again in the semi-finals on Sunday evening, with a time this time of 22 seconds 72, nothing less than the 8th best performance of all time. Only small regret: in the final, this time would have earned him a silver medal.
Appetite to spare
” It’s cool, reacted the swimmer after his semi-final, with his usual phlegm and his style as expeditious as his flapping wings on the water. It was nice, I felt really good at the start. » Grousset, however, had reason to lay a little more emphasis. Before the final and the performance of the Italian Ceccon, only the Russian Oleg Kostin had swum faster than him this season (22 seconds 62). But the latter is absent from the world championships in Fukuoka, like all his compatriots and Belarusian swimmers – they have been banned since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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He had therefore inherited the “great favorite” sign of a race in which he was not necessarily expected, unlike the 100m freestyle or the 50m freestyle, the finals of which are scheduled for Thursday and Saturday respectively. At the last Worlds, in Budapest, in June 2022, the sprinter from the National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance had won silver in the queen race and bronze on the one-way trip, but he remained at the gates of the final in 50 m butterfly (9th). “You learn from your mistakes. The pap’, it’s not easy. It took me a while to realize that my stroke was rather powerful, and not based on frequency. » It was while working on the round trip on the butterfly in training that he had the click: “I take pleasure in the 100 m pap’, I take pleasure in the 50 m pap’, the two are linked. »
During the French championships in Rennes, mid-June, the sprinter ventured into the 100m butterfly, which he had been swimming little so far, appropriating the French record in 50 seconds 61. In Rennes, Grousset above all sent a message to the competition. Five weeks before the Worlds, he achieved the second best world performance of the year, behind the 50 seconds 36 of Canadian Joshua Liendo. “It’s madness”, he commented, while such a time would have offered him a world silver medal in 2022, behind Kristof Milak’s 50 seconds 14. The Hungarian, who had achieved the double at home last summer by being crowned world champion in the 200m butterfly, is one of the great absentees in Japan, plagued by mental health problems.
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In Fukuoka, Grousset hopes to be able to reconcile the 50m freestyle and the 100m butterfly, the finals of which are scheduled for Saturday, just thirty-three minutes apart. But Michel Chrétien’s swimmer has an appetite to spare: with the relays, he could dive sixteen times this week. “When you love, you don’t count! »laughed this competitor, Saturday, on the eve of the start of the Worlds.
It is not this aquatic marathon that will scare this big guy who is not afraid to brave tiger sharks and bulldogs when he returns to dive or surf in the lagoons of New Caledonia, his native island.