France has a lot of work to do in order to defend its world championship title this summer in the men\u2019s 400 freestyle relay, but a little bit of help came its way last weekend in the form of Mehdy Metella at the Golden Tour meet in Nancy.<\/p>\n
Metella, mostly known as a butterflyer, won the 100 free with a 48.44. The time is pretty good on a global scale \u2013 10th in the world rankings \u2013 but the major note is that it is the fastest time swum by a Frenchman in 2015. Metella would have won the French national title last month with that time (he finished sixth with a 48.94), and it gives the French a bit of a boost for the 400 free relay.<\/p>\n
With James Magnussen out of the world championships, Australia suffers a major blow for the relay, giving Russia and the United States a clearer path to gold in Kazan. But with Metella\u2019s swim in Nancy, the French might be able to, at the very least, get on the medal stand.<\/p>\n
Metella is the younger brother of Olympic medalist Malia Metella, who became one of the few black swimmers to win an Olympic medal with a silver in the women’s 50 free in 2004. It\u2019s likely that Mehdy will become an Olympian as well next year, and could be one of the guiding forces behind France\u2019s goal of repeating as Olympic champions. He’s had some experience helping France’s 400 free relay win gold as part of the 2014 European championships squad and the short course world championship team later that year.<\/p>\n
Congratulations to Mehdy Metella on earning the Swimming World Performance of the Week!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
France has a lot of work to do in order to defend its world championship title this summer in the men\u2019s 400 freestyle relay, but a little bit of help<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":46667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,10,41228],"tags":[25342,26558,14459,35479,147,142],"class_list":["post-134802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-world","category-performance-of-the-week-videos","tag-james-magnussen","tag-kazan","tag-malia-metella","tag-mehdy-metella","tag-russia","tag-swimming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n