Frenchman Léon Marchand was crowned world champion in the 200m medley on Wednesday in Budapest, a few days after his first title in the 400m medley on Saturday.
Already world champion in the 400m medley and silver medalist in the 200m butterfly Léon Marchand was crowned in the 200m medley this Wednesday at the world championships in Budapest. With a time of 1min 55 22/100, he is ahead of the American Carson Foster (1 min 55.71) and the Japanese Dalya Seto (1 min 56.22). The 20-year-old Frenchman spoke to France 4 after this success: “Frankly it’s incredible, I saw the French get two medals just before me. I feel like there’s something pretty special going on in this team. There are a lot of young people and now we manage to win medals, to make good finals. It’s getting better and better and we’re in a positive spiral.” Marchand “really liked” his position in the water line N.4, because, he explained to the microphone of France 4, “I did well to be at the N.4 lane because Carson really came back hard on me in the crawl. It’s often that, after the first 100 meters I still have a lot of energy left, it allows me to be strong in the breaststroke, that’s where I get ahead of the others».
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For Marchand, the mad harvest of medals continues after gold on Saturday in the 400m medley and silver in the 200m butterfly on Tuesday. The 20-year-old, who trains with Bob Bowman, former coach of legend Michael Phelps, is now the third French swimmer to have achieved the performance of winning two world titles in the same year after Laure Manaudou in Melbourne (2007) and Florent Manaudou (2015) in Kazan. In the final of the 200m medley, he showed his power on the breaststroke, in the third length, to take the lead of the race which he never left despite the return of Carson Foster in the fourth and last length, in crawl. “I have known for a long time that swimming is not an easy sport. I learned a lot by going to the United States too, it was by having experiences like that, by doing European and world championships. These are my first senior world championships, but I have already taken part in (championships in) small baths, the NCAA (championship of American universities, editor’s note), a lot of competitions which allow me to better manage stress and to be more mature.»
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He took the opportunity to beat the French record, which he had already improved the day before (1 min 55.75). This is the third French medal on the day after Maxime Grousset’s silver (100m freestyle) and Analia Pigrée’s bronze (50m backstroke). The young 20-year-old French swimmer achieved a feat by being crowned in the 200 and 400m freestyle since only Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps had achieved this performance.