French Duo Yohann Ndoye Brouard And Mary-Ambre Moluh Kickstart Olympic Year With Euro Meet Records
French pair Yohann Ndoye Brouard and Mary-Ambre Moluh started the year of a home Olympics with Euro Meet records in their respective 100m backstroke races in Luxembourg.
Moluh was first up and split 29.11/30.56 to stop the clock at 59.67, taking 0.33 from the previous meet record of 1:00.00 held by Katinka Hosszu since January 2016.
Mary-Ambre Moluh: Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Scala / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto
The 18-year-old was followed home by French teammate Emma Terebo (1:00.41) and Poland’s Adela Piskorska, who clocked 1:01.65 a week after claiming the backstroke treble at the Flanders Cup.
Moluh matched her PB from the 2022 French Championships and was 0.37 outside Pauline Mahieu’s national record of 59.30, set in the semis at last year’s World Championships.
Ndoye Brouard followed up in the next race, splitting 25.63/27.49 to dominate throughout and touch in 53.12.
With that he sliced 0.68 from the Euro Meet mark of 53.80 set by world record-holder Thomas Ceccon in January 2020.
There was a 2.42secs gap to Bernhard Reitshammar in second (55.54) with Sam Greenbank – brother of Olympic and world 200 back medallist Luke – third in 56.31.
The efforts of Ndoye Brouard, Moluh and Terebo augur well for the French team ahead of Paris 2024 – especially given it’s only January – with Mewen Tomac, Mahieu and Analia Pigree underlining the depth of quality the Games’ hosts enjoy in backstroke.
Euro Meet Victories For Sjöström, Le Clos And Ribeiro
Sarah Sjöström dominated the women’s 50 fly, the Swede the only woman inside 26secs in 25.23, 0.21 outside her 2017 Euro Meet record of 25.02.
Teammate Sara Junevik was next home, almost a full second adrift in 26.22, with Tessa Giele third in 26.55.
Chad Le Clos: Photo Courtesy: Anton Geyser/SouthAfricanSportsImages
The men’s was a closer affair with 0.16 separating the top three, headed by world silver medallist Diogo Ribeiro in 23.41 ahead of Szebasztian Szabo (23.50) and Simon Bucher (23.57).
Chad Le Clos was fifth (23.62) with David Popovici eighth in 23.97, 0.23 outside his Romanian record of 23.74.
It was Le Clos’ second race of the evening after the South African had come back with a 29.89 final 50 to overhaul Giacomo Carina and take the touch in the 200 fly.
Carina was ahead throughout and held a 0.98 lead at the final turn but the London 2012 champion went past to stop the clock in 1:58.00 to 1:58.22.
There was clear water between the pair and Kevin Zhang who clocked 2:00.99 for third.
Lilou Ressencourt won the women’s race in 2:11.10 ahead of 2009-born Ukrainian Alina Baievych (2:12.11) who made up a deficit of 0.96 behind Laura Lahtinen at the 150 to go past the Finn to take second in 2:12.11 to 2:12.13.
Elsewhere at the Euro Meet, Serbia’s Anja Crevar recorded the fastest women’s 400IM of 4:43.89 with Oleksii Hrabarov of Ukraine leading the men’s in 4:23.21.
Maya Werner headed the 800 free in 8:35.48 with Leo Leverkus taking the men’s 1500 in 15:52.91.