Florent Manaudou, France’s swimming icon, eyes one last Olympic splash and dash

Florent Manaudou is training another two years in hopes that his Olympic career, which already includes a gold medal and three silvers, lasts about 64 more seconds in the swimming pool.

Manaudou, a 6-foot-6, 220-pound sprinter, took surprise gold in the 50m freestyle at the 2012 Olympics, then silver in 2016 and 2021 in the event dubbed the splash and dash.

“My body’s quite tired at the moment,” Manaudou, 31, said in a sitdown interview while in Florida for the Jax50 competition last week. “I cannot do the same things in the water [as in the past]. I cannot work the same way. And so I have to find the pathways to swim fast. But it’s difficult.”

The 50m free, an often breathless dance of maintaining technique while maximizing power, takes 21 seconds. Factor in rounds of preliminary heats, semifinals and the final, and it’s a little more than a minute of competition total at the Games for the athletes who specialize in it.

Manaudou said he probably would have retired after Tokyo, where he was runner-up to Caeleb Dressel, if not for what happened in the summer of 2017. Paris was awarded the 2024 Olympics.

Now, Manaudou will attempt to become the oldest French swimmer to win an Olympic medal, and one of the oldest French swimmers to ever compete at the Games, according to Olympedia.org.

Should he qualify in two years, he plans to make it his final competition in a 50-meter pool. He may hang on for short-course racing.

Manaudou, once labeled “the swimmer who doesn’t like to swim,” has a few goals between now and then. He would love to be an Opening Ceremony flagbearer on the Seine River after coming close to receiving the honor from his fellow athletes in Tokyo.

In the pool, he would like to set a personal best, which he has