Léon Marchand and Maxime Grousset, driving forces behind the French swimming team at the Singapore World Championships

A year after the excitement of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the French swimming team is once again getting a taste of major international competition on the other side of the planet, at the World Championships, which take place from July 27 to August 3 in Singapore. The twenty-seven French athletes competing arrived in the Asian city-state this week, after a ten-day training camp in Jakarta, Indonesia.

They were originally supposed to be twenty-eight, but the trip to the Indonesian capital caused Cyrielle Duhamel, who had competed in the 200m medley and 400m medley, to withdraw at the last minute after suffering from food poisoning. This is one less chance to shine for the French team, who hope to do at least as well as in 2023, in Fukuoka, Japan – many swimmers having skipped the 2024 edition, in Doha (Qatar), to better prepare for the Olympic Games.

In the Japanese archipelago, France finished fourth in the medal standings, behind Australia, the United States, and China. In the absence of Florent Manaudou , who put his career on hold after the Games, Léon Marchand and Maxime Grousset carry the bulk of the French ambitions. In Japan, the two men had secured all six podium finishes for the French team – three each.

In Singapore, for his first major event since the Games, Léon Marchand decided to skip the 200m breaststroke and the 200m butterfly , specialties in which he is the reigning Olympic champion. The Toulouse native decided to focus on the 400m medley and the 200m medley, the other two races in which he won gold in Paris. In a press conference on July 26, the athlete made no secret of his "desire" to go for the world record in the 200m medley, the best time of which has been held since 2011 by the American Ryan Lochte (1 min 54 s). Last summer, in the La Défense Arena pool in Nanterre, he came close, in 1 min 54 s 06. He will begin his World Championships with the series over this distance on Wednesday, July 30.

A triple medalist in Japan, but deprived of an individual podium at the Olympic Games, Maxime Grousset intends to make up for it in Singapore. Especially since the New Caledonian impressed at the French Championships in Montpellier in June, with two French records to his name, in the 50m butterfly and the 100m butterfly. Considered one of the favorites in these specialties, the 26-year-old swimmer even achieved the best world performance of the year in the 100m butterfly (50.11 seconds). "I still have some left in my tank. The goal will be 49 seconds next time," he said at the time.

Maxime Grousset can aim for a second world title in this distance, after the one he won at the 2023 World Championships, especially since the Olympic champion in this discipline, Hungarian Kristof Milak, will not be present in Singapore. However, he will have to achieve a small feat to slip onto the podium in the 50m freestyle or the 100m freestyle, where the competition is very strong, notably with the presence of China's Pan Zhanle and Romania's David Popovici.

In its quest for medals, France could also count on Anastasiia Kirpichnikova , silver medalist at the Paris Games in the 1,500m freestyle. However, the 25-year-old swimmer's presence at these championships was not guaranteed a few months ago. After the Olympics, Anastasiia Kirpichnikova took a long break. "I partied every night for two months," she told L'Equipe in May.