2023-07-27 18:25:33
Still stratospheric this Thursday, July 27, the Toulouse torpedo retained its title in the 200m medley at the Fukuoka Worlds. He is now the only Frenchman in history with five individual world titles. At 21 years old.
French swimming can look forward to the next Games in Paris with serenity. His new big fish, Léon Marchand, never stops gobbling up titles and records. So much so that this Thursday morning, July 27, the most assiduous followers were not wondering if the Frenchman could win the final of the 200m medley at the Worlds – he is already the reigning world champion in the distance after all – but rather wondered about the reference brand that he was likely to bring down.
This time, there was no question of a world record. But by winning in 1′54′’82, Léon Marchand took the opportunity to beat, for the fourth time in his career, the French record for the distance, and also seized the old European record, the one held by the Hungarian Laszlo Cseh since 2008.
Already in French history
Above all, the Toulouse torpedo won its third title in as many events during these world championships in Japan. Unheard of in individual for a Frenchman on a single edition. More dizzying: here he is already, at 21, crowned with five world crowns. A record that no other tricolor swimmer can present, men and women alike.
Prior to his title on Thursday, Marchand had settled the matter in the 200m butterfly twenty-four hours earlier, hitting the wall several beats in advance. The gap with the competition was even more impressive last Sunday at the opening of the Worlds, when the young athlete was adorned with gold in the 400m medley, by shaving off Michael Phelps’ previous mark by 1 second 37.
Asked the day before about this historic chrono that he could roll back, Marchand simply referred to it as a “stage”. We are talking about the ultimate record of the American, considered the greatest swimmer in history. “There are really no limits to what I can do,” the Frenchman would later assure us. Not really arrogant, rather lucid about his swimming and his room for improvement.
Cast Master
As if this geek who dreams of developing video games had created his own software, with the aim of making himself unbeatable. As if the swimmer, undefeated for a year now, had programmed himself so as to only strike gold. In reality, Marchand has always been well surrounded. Son of Olympic swimmers – the father was vice-world champion in Perth in 1998, the mother once held the French record for the 200m medley – he has been perfecting his technique for two years in Arizona under the orders of the illustrious Bob Bowman in Arizona, Phelps’ former mentor. “We are very close, I watch over him, a bit like a surrogate father,” Bowman said last year. “As he is away from home, he needs someone to make sure everything is okay. But he is very independent and he has adapted well to life (in the United States).
With the illustrious American coach, the prodigy has improved in back, his weak point, he who is sovereign in breaststroke and butterfly. But Léon Marchand has another asset, the one that wins titles in swimming. The man excels in the exercise of casting, where he dominates even more than Phelps, so far master in the matter. A statistic noted by FranceInfo: during his record in the 400 medley, Marchand swam more than 100.62 meters (or 51 seconds) completely submerged, when Phelps had covered 77 meters (or 38 seconds) during his record over the distance in 2008.
At the same time, the French prodigy continues to follow the advice of Nicolas Castel, his lifelong coach since he started swimming at the age of eight in Occitania, at the Dauphins du TOEC. With him, he first shone as a junior, with three medals in the international youth championships. Marchand even distinguished himself in the final of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, finishing 6th in the 400m medley, at only 19 years old.
A year earlier, however, he was far from Tokyo, bordering on burnout. Said that he no longer took pleasure in repeating his scales in the water every morning. “I didn’t want to swim anymore, I couldn’t get up. I needed a break, to stay with my family, to redo things that I did as a child with my little brother. I called a mental trainer to work on me, to know who I really am”, he told Libé on the subject, last year.
Expatriation across the Atlantic has also done him good. “He found his philosophy of life and his balance through swimming, his studies (in computer science) and his life”, rejoices Nicolas Castel. At the edge of the pools, we hear him repeat a lot “to have fun”, “to have fun”. The young man also says: “I always had in mind that I wanted to be an Olympic champion one day. I don’t know when, we’ll see.” The sooner in Paris the better.
Update: 6:25 p.m., with more context.
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