France won the silver medal behind Michael Phelps’s U.S. team in the 2008 Olympic men’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay.
The French quartet of Amaury Leveaux, Fabien Gilot, Frédérick Bousquet and Alain Bernard finished in 3:08.32 at Beijing. That time set a European record and placed France just 0.08 seconds behind the United States, which won in a world-record 3:08.24 after Jason Lezak’s dramatic anchor-leg comeback.
France actually held the lead after the first three legs. Leveaux, Gilot and Bousquet built a margin of more than half a second before Bernard entered the water. Lezak gradually closed the gap over the final 50 meters, turning a likely French victory into one of the closest finishes in Olympic swimming history.
Australia took bronze in 3:09.91. The result is sometimes remembered mainly as Phelps’s relay, but the French team’s performance was itself historic: its silver medal came with a continental record, and the top three teams all broke the previous Olympic record.