France’s Leon Marchand’s two Olympic golds make swimming history

PARIS – With each of his strokes in the Olympic Games 200 meter breaststroke final, France’s Leon Marchand was greeted, accompanied really, by the crowd’s chant, both rhythmic and deafening, wave after rouge, blanc and bleu wave.

Allez!

Allez!

Go!

Go!

As Marchand charged through the final 50 meters, the chant grew quicker and louder to the point where it was unclear whether the tempo was being set by the swimmer or the Paris Le Defense Arena busting at its seams.

“Every time I took a breath I could hear this huge noise for me,” Marchand said later.

Allez!

Allez!

Go!

Go!

They urged him on not as a warning that a rival was closing in on him but with the realization that they were witnessing the unthinkable; calling him home to a historic shore.

Marchand touched the final wall first for the second time Tuesday night as if slapping his palm down into the wet cement of history, a victory that touched off another chant.

LE-ON! LE-ON! LE-ON!

In the space of two hours, Marchand, 22, swimming’s ultimate multi-tasker, had won two gold medals, 200 breasttroke and 200 butterfly, knocked off two reigning Olympic champions, set two Olympic records and become the first swimmer to win medals in the butterfly and breaststroke in the same Games and the first swimmer to capture two individual gold medals on the same day since 1976, a feat that only months ago not even his coach, Bob Bowman, the architect of Michael Phelps’ eight gold medals at the Beijing Games in 2008, thought possible.

“That’s probably the greatest double I’ve ever seen in the history of the sport,” Phelps said.

“It’s his moment,” said Australia’s Zac Stubblefty-Cook, the Olympic 200 breaststroke champion in Tokyo who finished second to Marchand Tuesday. “He’s hungry. He’s on the cusp of being one of the greatest swimmers (in history). We’re just seeing the beginning.”

It’s actually been Marchand’s week. In a little more than 36 hours, he had swum six races, two heats, two semifinals, and two finals, on the way to a night that, like the chants that filled it, will echo through the decades.

“Two golds in two hours is quite remarkable,” the normally reserve Marchand admitted.

“When you talk of Michael Phelps, when you talk of Ian Thorpe,” Adrian Moorhouse, the British Olympic champion, said on the BBC, “you are now going to have to talk about Leon Marchand because that is one of the best things I think we have ever seen.”

It was also another record-setting night for another swimmer included any conversation about the sport’s all-time greats, American distance superstar Katie Ledecky.

Ledecky, 27, defended her 1,500 freestyle title by shattering her own Olympic record, her 15 minute, 30.02 second clocking knocking more than five seconds off her winning time three years ago in Tokyo and putting her more than 10 seconds ahead of runner-up Anastasiia Kirpichnikova of France (15:40.35).

It was her eighth Olympic gold, her 12th medal overall, both figures tying the Olympic swimming records held by American Jenny Thompson, who captured eight golds, three silvers and a bronze medal between 1992 and 2004. But all eight of Thompson’s Olympic titles came on relays. Seven of Ledecky’s eight gold medals were in individual events.

“I try not to think about history very much,” Ledecky said. “I know those names, those people I’m up with. They’re people I looked up to when I first started swimming. So it’s an honor to be named among them. I’m grateful for them inspiring me. There are so many great swimmers that have helped me get to this moment.”

While Ledecky shifts her attention to winning a fourth consecutive Olympic 800 freestyle, Marchand now focuses on the 200 individual medley, which starts with Thursday’s heats.

“The word exceptional isn’t strong enough to describe him,” said French national team coach Philippe Lucas. “It’s not so much his strength for swimming one race after the other. It’s the way he swims them with such ease and intelligence.”

And Marchand has competed under tremendous pressure. L’Equipe, the French sports daily, devoted five pages and eight stories Tuesday morning to his double gold medal quest.

That pressure will only grow after Tuesday night.

Marchand grew up in Toulouse. His father Xavier Marchand competed in the 200 IM at the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games. His mother, Celine Bonnet, competed in the 1992 Games and an uncle, Christophe Marchand, was two-time Olympian.

But his parents didn’t pressure him to follow them in swimming and he actually quit the sport at age 7, complaining about the cold water and choosing to pursue rugby and judo. But he soon realized “that I was never as good on the land as I was in the water.”

He was sixth in the 400 IM at the Tokyo Olympics as a 19-year-old. But it wasn’t until he moved to Arizona State to train with Bob Bowman, Phelps’ longtime coach, that Marchand began to realize his potential.

He swept the 200 and 400 IMs at the 2022 World Championships, a feat he duplicated at the 2023 Worlds, setting a world record in the 400 IM (4:02.50) and also winning the the 200 butterfly.

But when Marchand first raised the possibility of chasing gold in both the 200 butterfly and breaststroke in the same night, Bowman opposed the idea. As recently as last week Bowman pushed Marchand to swim one or the other.

But the coach changed his mind after Marchand won the 400 IM in an Olympic record 4:02.95 Sunday, finishing more than five seconds ahead of the runner-up.

“Ok, let’s do it,” Bowman told Marchand. “I think you can do it.”

So at 8:44 p.m., Marchand stepped up onto the starting block for the 200 butterfly final.

Hungary’s Kristof Milak, the defending Olympic champion and world and Olympic record holder, seemed to be cruising to another gold medal, building a comfortable lead from the start.

Even at the final turn for the last 50 meters, Milak still had a .72 lead, a seemingly insurmountable gap. But Marchand – and the crowd – refused to give up.

“I was trying to get energy from entire crowd,” Marchand said. “They were really amazing, really pushing me.”

Marchand emerged from underwater at the turn on Milak’s shoulder, then caught and passed the Hungarian for a 1:51.21 to 1:51.75 victory, shaving four-hundredths off the Olympic record.

“I could hear the whole pool go crazy,” Marchand said. “I think that is why I was able to win that race. I used the energy from the crowd.”

One hour and 45 minutes later Marchand was back for the 200 breaststroke.

“Watching him walk out, I think was the most exciting moment of that race,” Stubblefty-Cook said. “To watch him soak up that moment.”

Indeed Marchand’s second race of the night lacked the drama of the 200 fly final. Instead Marchand with a dominant performance and the La Defense crowd completed one of the most memorable nights in Olympic swimming history.

The crowd’s chant, the rhythmic and raucous urging him on, meeting each stroke of his 2:05.85 victory.

“It didn’t feel like a swim meet. It felt like a rugby game,” Stubblefty-Cook said. “I couldn’t hear the block. You can’t hear yourself think. It was an awesome atmosphere in front of a crowd that big again. It’s awesome for the sport.”

After a second Marchand medal ceremony, after the lingering crowd finally left the arena, sing, songing “LE-ON!, LE-ON!, LE-ON!” in the cafes that surround the venue, all the way to Metro and beyond, when your ears had almost stopped ringing, Australia’s Kyle Chalmers, the silver medalist in the 100 freestyle, put the night and the moment into perspective.

“I’ve got to swim two laps of freestyle, it’s not that hard,” Chalmers said. “He’s got to swim eight laps (tonight). I can’t imagine doing that. Four laps of butterfly is very hard with so much pressure and expectation. To then cool off, go to the medal ceremony, and back it up, he is wild. He is a generational talent. I’m lucky to share the pool deck with him.”