Léon Marchand, great hope of French swimming, disqualified Thursday for a fault in the turn of the 400 m medley, finally saw his victory and his best world performance of the year validated, Friday at the Grand Prix of San Antonio (Texas). “After a new video review of Thursday night’s race, Léon Marchand’s disqualification has been overturned“, said the organizers. At first, they estimated that he had been the author of a turn violation, at 350 meters, when he finished in freestyle (crawl) and had already won a race.
As a result of this rebound, the 19-year-old Toulousain, who ranked 6th in the Olympic final at the Tokyo Games last year, will be able to participate in the World Championships in Budapest (June 18-July 3) and the European Championships. from Rome (August 11-21). His time of 4 min 10 sec 38/100th, the best achieved to date in 2022, proving to be well below the minima (4.17.48) for these two competitions. Close to his French record (4:09.65) achieved at the National Championships last year, the one who swims at the University of Arizona with Bob Bowman, the mentor of Michael Phelps, has well and truly overtaken the American Jay Litherland (2nd), arrived more than nine seconds later, and the Argentinian Joaquin Gonzalez Pinero, ranked 3rd, more than 11 seconds behind.
Marchand, who has just won the 200 yards medley (182 m) at the American university championships (NCAA), continued his harvest in Texas on Friday evening, since he also won the 200 m breaststroke in 2 min 09 sec 24 /100th, ahead of Nic Fink (2:11.67) and Chase Kalisz (2:12.47). And not content with beating his personal record over the distance, the Frenchman also achieved the minima for the World and European Championships, which are set at 2:10.32. Saturday he will end his weekend with the 200 m medley.