Florent Manaudou Wins Men’s 50m Freestyle Gold -- London 2012 Olympics

France’s Florent Manaudou wins the men’s 50m freestyle event at the London 2012 Olympic Games (3 August) setting a time of seconds. Manaudou was followed by Cullen Jones (USA) winning the silver and Cesar Cielo (BRA) taking bronze in the event at the Aquatics Centre. Subscribe to the Olympics here & hit the bell! 🔔 Swimming has featured on the programme of all editions of the Games since 1896. The very first Olympic events were freestyle (crawl) or breaststroke. Backstroke was added in 1904. In the 1940s, breaststrokers discovered that they could go faster by bringing both arms forward over their heads. This practice was immediately forbidden in breaststroke, but gave birth to butterfly, whose first official appearance was at the 1956 Games in Melbourne. This style is now one of the four strokes used in competition. Women’s swimming became Olympic in 1912 at the Stockholm Games. Since then, it has been part of every e