For three-quarters of the 200m butterfly event, Frenchman Leon Marchand was trailing Hungarian Kristóf Milák. And then on the final lap as he pushed off the wall on the turn, Marchand disappeared. The joyously parochial and raucous French crowd held its breath. Milak’s head had bobbed out of water and he was snaking his way towards the finish line, when suddenly Marchand emerged from his long game-turning move under water. The crowd began to holler as they realised that their 22-year-old swimming superstar was about to overtake his opponent.
“I could hear the whole pool going crazy. I think that’s why I was able to win that race. I really used that energy from the crowd,” Marchand would say after completing the heist.
Of the many significant features of this Olympics, nothing comes close to the sheer unadulterated joy of the French crowd and their relationship with Marchand. The burden on the swimmer to collect a bagful of gold almost rivalled Sachin Tendulkar’s. To quench their thirst and live up to his own dreams, Marchand had to go where no man has gone before.
No one in history has completed the 200m butterfly-breaststroke double at the Olympics. Not even the great human fish Michael Phelps tried that. Until Marchand. A double Olympic champion in one session – separated by just one-and-a-half hours. He had already won a gold in the team event and on Friday night, won the gold in the individual medley as well. As he got out of the pool, he closed his eyes to soak up the crowd shouting ‘Marchand Marchand’ that melted into the ‘marchons, marchons’ lyrics of the French national anthem La Marseillaise. After each of his victories, thousands joined in boisterous renditions of the national anthem.
Leon Marchand 📈📈📈
Swimming 📈📈📈
Sports 📈📈📈pic.twitter.com/aw8dPR5nzW
— Kyle Sockwell (@kylesockwell) August 3, 2024
Just one-and-a-half hours after hoodwinking Milak, Marchand would return to thunderous chants of ‘Le-on! Le-on’ for the 200m breaststroke event. The relationship would reach the next base here. Every time Marchand’s head bobbed up on the final lap, the arena thundered with ‘Allez! Allez!’ (Let’s go) chants. The shouts were so ballistic that athletes in the middle of competition in fencing and table tennis in neighbouring arenas stopped competing to hear the French go mad.
And to think when he was 7, Marchand quit swimming for two years as he found the water too cold.
“I was really skinny and the pool was just awful. So I quit swimming for two years,” he would tell the website of Arizona State University (ASU), where his stint brought him close to Phelps’s coach Bob Bowman, who would provide the final push he needed to become a champion swimmer.
His secondary school friends talk about an “underdeveloped” boy who was nicknamed “shrimp” in sixth grade. Marchand has swimming genes with both his parents being Olympic swimmers as was his paternal uncle. And once he got over his aversion for cold water and returned to the pool, progress was steady.
Tying up loose ends
It would still need two developments during the Covid year in 2020 for the final transformation. First, he sought help from a mental-health specialist as he felt he was swimming more in fear than joy. He felt nervousness was holding him back. The second thing he did was to email Bowman to ask him if he could join his college; Bowman was coaching the ASU swimming team.
“The first thing I worked on with my mental coach [Thomas Sammut] was managing my stress and nervousness before competitions because when I was really nervous, I couldn’t swim well at all,” he told a press conference. “So I’ve been working on that, trying to be as relaxed as possible before and during competitions.”
Even his sleep was disturbed in the past and Sammut taught him a few breathing exercises. “I breathe only through my nose for a few minutes. It helps me stay calm and fall asleep”. During competitions, he has another more extensive breathing routine, glimpses of which could be seen at this Olympics during his walk from the change room to the starting point.
“I close my eyes and think about my swim, my race and a few words that make me feel better. It really helps me manage my energy for the competition.”
Leon Marchand. 2024 Gold Medalist🏅
30% of the race underwater. 🏊
Pay attention kids. This is how it’s done.
Day 1 might be 2 kicks off every wall and Day 5428 is 15m off each wall.
1% gains add up. 💥 pic.twitter.com/I5HQoUe7ns
— Jack Little (@jacklitt1e) August 1, 2024
Bowman, who coached Phelps through all his Olympic medals (23 gold and 28 in all), hadn’t heard of the teenager when the mail hit his inbox, but the name stirred something; he had heard about Leon’s father and so he checked the swimming timings of Leon and was pleasantly surprised at how good they were. He said yes, and thus began a most fruitful relationship. As the duo progressed, and Leon began doing well in competitions, one day Phelps would scream on air during his commentary stint, “Bob has been teaching him a few tricks!”. Phelps would also meet Leon and tell him he has the potential to be a lot quicker.
Bowman recalled one particular moment when he realised Leon could start aping his more illustrious ward Phelps. It was a practice session when he had kept a set of 500-yard freestyles, which Marchand had never swum in a competitive meet. With one set remaining, Bowman challenged Marchand to see how fast he could swim. Marchand asked what Phelps’ best time was. Four minutes and 23 seconds, Bowman said. “So Léon (does) 4:18, and I know nobody’s doing that. And then he swam it at a meet two weeks later, and it was like the fifth-fastest one ever. So, he’s pretty good at mentally comparing himself to Michael,” Bowman would say.
Physically and skill-wise, he was ready for the Paris Olympics but one thing remained. How was he going to handle the French crowd? As it turned out, pretty well. Four gold medals – not bad for a boy who was called a shrimp.
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