Léon Marchand - LIVE: Still in gold, follow the last relay final!
Winner of the 200m medley and author of a new world record, Léon Marchand, worrying in the series, reacted this Sunday and won the world title in the 400m medley.
The surprise in the 4x100m medley series this morning came from the Chinese relay team, the reigning Olympic champion, who was eliminated!
Léon Marchand will be back on lane number 1 in a few minutes in the final of the 4x100m medley relay. The favorites are the Americans, who have the fastest time in the heats and are on lane number 4, but we'll also be keeping an eye on the Russian team on lane number 5.
Summer McIntosh seems untouchable over this distance and intends to strike hard after her "defeat" yesterday against Katie Ledecky in the 800m freestyle.
Léon Marchand now has just a few minutes before switching to the 4x100m medley relay where he will be the second relay runner for the French team and in charge of the breaststroke.
Léon Marchand set the record straight in the 400m medley final. The Frenchman completed the distance two seconds off his world record. But let's remember that this year's 400m medley is placed at the end of the program, with all the fatigue of the week, whereas this race usually opens the week and generally represents Léon Marchand's first race in a major competition.
Léon Marchand is the 400m medley world champion in 4'04"73! He beats Matsushita by almost 4 seconds. Huge!
Now for the breaststroke, where he struggled this morning. He has a 2'88 lead over Matsushita before the 100m breaststroke and at the halfway point.
Marchand has reacted! He finishes the breaststroke with a 4'05 lead over Borodin!
The first 100m was a good one in butterfly. Marchand took the lead, two tenths off his world record, and continued with the backstroke.
On lane number 1, Léon Marchand sets up near the cone. Will the Frenchman achieve another feat this Sunday and turn things around after the heats? He'll have to swim virtually blind at the far end of the Singapore pool.
In lane number 1, Léon Marchand will be up against the Russians (under the neutral banner) Maxim Stupin and Ilya Borodin in the 400m medley final at lanes number 2 and 3. The best time of the heats, the young and promising Japanese Tomoyuki Matsushita will be right in the center of lane number 4, next to his compatriot Asaki Nishikawa. In lane number 6, the British Max Lichtfield is there and in lane number 7 the Australian Brendon Smith. The Hungarian Gabor Zombori, the last to qualify for the final, is in lane number 8.
The 400m medley final is scheduled for 1:59 p.m. Has Léon Marchand, who disappointed in the heats with a 7th-place time, been taking it easy or is he struggling physically? We'll find out in a few minutes...
Léon Marchand is aiming for another world title in the 400m medley this Sunday but struggled to find and maintain the pace in the heats with his 7th best time. Observers will have noted some surprising split times. Having started well in the butterfly, rather in pace in the backstroke compared to the best time of the Japanese Matsushita, the gap suddenly increased in the breaststroke, a stroke which is usually one of the Frenchman's strong points compared to his rivals. The first 50m in particular was tough: 36.54, a second more than the Japanese, before a second 50m at the same tempo (36.50). The crawl was not able to reverse the trend, with there too a difficult first 50m in 31.43. There too, a second more than the Japanese.
The International Federation has announced the line-up for the 4x100m medley relay, the final of which will take place at 2:30 p.m. Léon Marchand is expected to be the second relay runner, in breaststroke. Yohann Ndoye Brouard will lead the relay in backstroke, followed by Marchand in breaststroke, Maxime Grousset in butterfly, the distance in which he was crowned world champion yesterday, and Yann Le Goff in freestyle.
Léon Marchand was born on May 17, 2002 in Toulouse and is the son of two former swimmers: Xavier Marchand, silver medalist at the 200m medley world championships in 1998, and Céline Bonnet, backstroke swimmer and medley specialist, who notably participated in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. His uncle, Christophe, is also a former Olympic swimmer, now the sports director of a swimming pool in Clichy. The young Léon has obviously been swimming in pools since he was very young, even if he had a preference for judo and rugby before embarking on his parents' footsteps, going so far as to be crowned French champion in the 200m butterfly in Rennes in 2019, making him the first French swimmer to achieve such a title at the age of 17. A few months later, he won a bronze medal in the 400m medley and the 200m breaststroke at the 2019 European Junior Championships. At the 2022 World Swimming Championships in Budapest, he left with three medals, including two gold. His biggest achievement came at the 2024 Paris Olympics, with four individual gold medals (200m medley, 400m medley, 200m butterfly, and 200m breaststroke), plus one with the French men's 4x100m medley relay.
Léon Marchand comes from a lineage of swimmers. His mother is simply Céline Bonnet, a backstroke specialist and multiple French champion. His father, Xavier Marchand, was a world vice-champion in the 200m medley in Perth, Australia, in 1998.
The French swimmer, a specialist in the 400m medley, is a big figure in the world of swimming and measures 1.83m according to the latest data from the FFN.
The day after the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where he reached his first Olympic final, finishing 6th, Léon Marchand packed his bags to join Arizona State University and a certain Bob Bowman, former mentor of a certain Michael Phelps. The young prodigy has since continued to progress and impressed the United States. He made headlines there in May 2022 when he broke the NCAA record for the 200-yard individual medley, previously held by Caeleb Dressel. A performance congratulated by... Michael Phelps on Instagram.
Beyond the results in the pool, Léon Marchand has simply evolved since leaving for the United States, as he explained to 20 minutes in June 2022. "In bodybuilding, I did more "weightlifting", more explosiveness. I am much more powerful. Mentally, I gained autonomy and a lot of experience because I swam a lot in the NCAA (the university championship in the United States). I did a lot of races, a lot of relays. In competition, I can now throw myself at the wall to win the race. I swam a lot with Bob (Bowman). I improved my backstroke, my crawl. I have more assets than before. I swim faster, quite simply." After his raid at the Paris Olympics, Léon Marchand, having turned professional, can no longer compete in NCAA competition but followed Bob Bowman's training group in Texas.
Based in the USA, Léon Marchand is working under the legendary Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps' former mentor, and is learning a lot from him. "I was very impressed at first. But he's a really great coach, with a lot of experience. I know I'll be ready for any competition with him. And he's really relaxed. He's had a lot of results, so he's cooler. We have a lot of fun training while knowing where we're going, what we want to do. There's a connection that's been created between us."
Léon Marchand won the gold medal in the 400m medley in his first race at the Paris Olympics in July 2024. The Frenchman left no chance for his opponents, finishing several seconds ahead in a race that turned into a demonstration, setting an Olympic record to boot. The Toulouse swimmer then went on to win the 200m butterfly after an epic duel with Milak before making history by winning a third title in the 200m breaststroke. The legend of Marchand didn't stop there, winning a fourth title in the 200m medley and then helping the 4x100m medley relay team to the bronze medal alongside Yohann Ndoye Brouard (backstroke), Maxime Grousset (butterfly), and Florent Manaudou (freestyle).
L'Internaute
