French newspaper L’equipe has broken a report that is guaranteed to be the biggest French story of the year. Olympic 200 freestyle Champion Yannick Agnel has decided to leave his training ground in Nice, France to seek a new structure in the United States.
Details were thin in the report, but it seems as though Agnel, despite the incredible successes he achieved under Fabrice Pellerin, is unhappy with his early results at the European Championships and the French National Championships/World Championship Trials.
In further shocking news, L’equipe has reported that Agnel will not swim individual events at the World Championships, and will instead swim only the 400 and 800 free relays, and the 400 medley relay. That means no World Championship contention to go with his gold medal in the 200 free, and no shot at a medal in the 100 free either.
Tip of the hat to Greg Arkhurst for bringing this news to our attention.
It is now official, Agnel will swim with coach Bowman.
See this link (in french)
http://www.lequipe.fr/Natation/Actualites/Agnel-avec-bowman/372545
I just hope this has no effect on Muffat since losing an training partner, with whom she has experienced so much, it seems impossible that no effects would take place. The only question remains, how bad they will be?
A key question, for me, is whether Stravius now want to swim the event, because he has as good a chance as anyone else in the world at winning a medal.
I’m not sure what Yannick is expecting; Bob runs a pretty hard-nosed, high volume program. There isn’t going to be any swimming to the beat of certain songs with waterproof mp3 players or purely technique-oriented practices like Pellerin does. Bowman also has his hands in a bunch of different national team’s programs right now. Didn’t he just sign a deal to work with Turkey not that long ago? I don’t know how he’s going to juggle all these hats he has spinning right now, but if you’re going to uproot your life in the prime of your career and move to a completely alien training environment, I’d think you’d want someone who is 100% focused on coaching the team you’re… Read more »
Craig Lord as confirmed thru an interview with Pellegrin, that Agnel met with Bob Bowman May19. Im interested as to how Bowman will eventually answer the question “how are Agnel’s times in practice compared to Michael’s”
According to the French press Yannick Agnel will issue a PR this Tuesday. So wait and see!
maybe he wants to switch nationalities? lol.
I don’t know if Bowman is the best fit for Agnel. Yes he is a great coach, but is he a great sprint coach?
Agnel already has great back end speed, he’ll need the type of front end speed that coach like Hawke will be able to help.
I hope he speaks English tres bien. My favourite Alabama story is the Japanese student who was ‘asked ‘ to put his arms up . Because he did not understand he got promptly shot dead.
I’m curious, who shot the student? robber? police?
I think he was trespassing . He could not read English either – in backwoods country private really means private . Alabamans do not mess around . Other than that they are very friendly.
However the actual homicide rate is about the same as Maryland.
These are the things foreign ( legal ) visitors look at.
JG all this time I thought you were Australian.
The incident you refer to happened in Louisiana (not Alabama) over 20 years ago on Halloween.
Thanks but that is not fair. Louisiana has it all – this & , Swamp People & Duck Dynasty & the wonderful folk at the pawn shop.
Yannick ought go to Alabama AND make a TV series to put it on the map.
There’s a very real possibility of Phelps and Agnel as training partners, both aiming for the 100/200 free. That would make for a much better tv show than that circus starring Lochte.