Quick Facts
Biography
Julien Nicolardot (born December 13, 1981) is a French swimmer, who specialized in breaststroke events. He is a member of Mulhouse Olympic Natation in Mulhouse, and is coached and trained by Lionel Horter.
Nicolardot competed as a lone French swimmer in the men's 200 m breaststroke at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. He fired off a scintillating 2:13.36 to immediately punch his ticket to Beijing at the French Championships in Dunkirk, bettering the insurmountable FINA A-standard (2:13.70) by more than a third (0.33) of a second. Swimming on the outside in heat four, Nicolardot headed into the final lap with Austria's Hunor Mate and Kazakhstan's Yevgeniy Ryzhkov racing against each other in a sprint finish for the top three spot, but faded nearly to fifth with a steady 2:12.44, nearly a second faster than his entry time. Nicolardot failed to advance to the semifinals, as he placed twenty-eighth overall out of fifty-three swimmers in the prelims.