Leon Marchand’s First Olympic Gold Will Only Fuel Michael Phelps Comparisons

When you’re a world-record holder, there are a lot of expectations. When you’re a world-record holder racing in your home country’s Olympics, those expectations expand exponentially.

The frenzy began the morning of July 28, when Léon Marchand clocked the fastest qualifying time in the 400-m individual medley, in which swimmers race in all four strokes—butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle. The decibel level jumped again later that evening during the final, when Marchand dove in and never looked back. The 22-year-old led at every turn, continuing to widen the distance between him and the other swimmers with every lap until by the time he turned to race home, he was a good three body lengths ahead of the competition.

“I had goosebumps before and during the race too,” he said. “On the breaststroke section I could hear everyone just cheering for me. That was special and winning today was amazing for me.” Marchand’s time of 4:02.95 didn’t crack his previous world record, but it was good enough to set an Olympic record, which was previously set by Michael Phelps at the 2008 Olympics.

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Japan’s Tomoyuki Matsushita earned silver, more than five seconds behind Marchand. "I knew already that Léon was very fast. He is the best,” Matsushita said.

The U.S.’s Carson Foster won the bronze medal and was already putting his experience into perspective moments after leaving the pool. “It’s something that I’ll be able to tell my kids one day hopefully that I swam next to Léon in his home country at his home Olympics," he said.

This is Marchand’s second Olympics; the Toulouse native competed in Tokyo but failed to win a medal. Swimming is in his blood: both of his parents were Olympic medley swimmers, the event that has become Marchand’s specialty as well. It’s also the event that Phelps dominated in the early 2000s.

Though Marchand has tried to downplay the similarities, he has a lot in common with the Olympic great. Like Phelps, he was not a fan of the water as a young boy. Phelps has said that he disliked being underwater so much that he stuck to floating on his back. Marchand, meanwhile, has said he found the immersive experience both cold and boring. Marchand never thought about following his famous parents to swim competitively and swam mainly for fun.

After he won his first French national championships at age 17, however, he became more serious about the sport and looked for opportunities to swim competitively and on scholarship. He focused on programs in the U.S., which he saw as providing stronger and more numerous opportunities. It was 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, which both helped and hurt his search. On the one hand, it made his endeavor slightly easier since everything was being done remotely and the distance (and ocean) separating him from his dream schools wasn’t as much of an issue. On the other, he could only meet and get to know his future coaches virtually.

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Marchand cold-emailed Bob Bowman, Phelps’ longtime coach, who headed the program at Arizona State University, asking for the chance to train with him. Bowman wasn’t familiar with the Frenchman but recognized the last name and researched Marchand’s times. He was immediately impressed and, Marchand told AFP, responded in 15 minutes expressing interest. Marchand began as a freshman the following year.

Bowman’s instincts proved prescient as he began turning Marchand into a world-champion swimmer in the very events, the 200-m and 400-m individual medley, that his parents, as well as Phelps, raced. In 2023, Marchand broke Phelps’ longest-standing world record, which had remained untouched for 15 years.

“I definitely dreamed of that before,” he said of his gold-medal race. “Doing this in my hometown is pretty cool.” It also meant a call from French President Emmanuel Macron, who phoned the swimming star to congratulate him and tell him his entire family was watching the race. “They were all screaming on the phone; it was kind of funny,” Marchand said.

The pressure of competing with the weight of a country’s expectations is a new experience for the introverted swimmer. He told Paris 2024 that he’s been working with a mental coach for two years and working on breathing techniques—inhaling and exhaling only through his nose, for example—to calm himself down and to sleep better.

“I was trying to focus on myself, but it’s really hard when 15,000 people are cheering for me,” he said.

Marchand wasn’t the only newsmaker at La Defense Arena. Gretchen Walsh, who set a world record in the 100-m butterfly during the U.S. Olympic trials in June, was out-touched by her teammate Torri Huske, who slid in for a surprise gold in the event. The win was especially sweet for Huske, who just failed to make the podium at the Tokyo Olympics by one one-hundredth of a second. “I’m not going to lie, that was devastating,” she said. “But it really fueled me and I think it did make me better.”

And American Nic Fink added another silver to the U.S. tally by tying Great Britain’s Adam Peaty in the men’s 100-m breaststroke, behind Italian Nicolo Martinenghi who touched the wall first for gold.

But the evening belonged to Marchand mania. While the swimmer's performance in Paris will only continue the inevitable comparisons to Phelps, his debut Olympic showing is evidence that he may be able to set his own standards after all. Marchand is expected to swim at least three more individual events—the 200-m individual medley, the 200-m breaststroke, and 200-m butterfly—as well as relays later in the week.