Male NCAA Swim of the Year: Leon Marchand Dabbled with 500 Freestyle; Refined Limits of Possibility
For more than two years, Leon Marchand has been considered the world’s best swimmer, dominating the individual medley events like Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte did during their heydays while also becoming the best in the world in the 200 butterfly and 200 breaststroke. When Marchand won four individual gold medals at the Paris Olympics, he joined Phelps and Mark Spitz as the only male swimmers to ever achieve such success at a single Games.
But as dominant as Marchand has become in long course, he is even better in short course, thanks to underwater dolphin kicks even more powerful than Phelps and Lochte had. In the yards version of his signature event, the 400 IM, Marchand owns a best time four seconds ahead of anyone else in history. And Marchand’s versatility expands in the 25-yard course; at the 2023 and 2024 NCAA Championships, he posted the fastest sprint breaststroke relay splits in history.
He has never competed internationally in freestyle, but consider his yards times from NCAAs: his 40.28 relay leadoff in the 100 free made him the third-fastest man ever (now fourth), and when he led off Arizona State’s 800 free relay, he clocked 1:28.97 to become the first man under 1:29 in the 200 free (although Luke Hobson swam faster in the individual event two days later). Finally, what Marchand achieved in the 500 free was one of the all-time great collegiate performances.
Leon Marchand — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
During his first two years at Arizona State, Marchand’s NCAA Championships lineup included both IM events plus the 200 breaststroke. But in year three, he opted for the 500 free instead of the 200 IM at the Pac-12 Championships, and he broke the NCAA and U.S. Open records with a time of 4:06.18, 14-hundredths quicker than Kieran Smith’s former mark. That performance plus the presence of Hubert Kos and Owen McDonald on the Sun Devils’ roster convinced Marchand and head coach Bob Bowman that he should stick with the 500 free at the national level.
When he reached Indianapolis, Marchand battled two former NCAA champions in the event, Texas’ Luke Hobson (2023) and Georgia’s Jake Magahey (2021). But Marchand jumped on the race and did not let anyone come close, leading by more than a second after 50 yards and by almost two seconds after 100. He continued building the lead on both the field and record pace, and he finished in an otherworldly time of 4:02.31.
Hobson and Magahey both surpassed the winning time in the event from one year earlier, but both finished more than four-and-a-half seconds behind.
In long course, Marchand would struggle to beat a swimmer like Smith in the 400 free, an event in which Smith was the Olympic bronze medalist in Tokyo. But Marchand kicked underwater for almost half of each lap, a strategy common in butterfly and backstroke events but unheard of in the longer freestyle events. He executed the strategy to perfection while beating his own record by nearly four seconds.
After that NCAA Championships, in which Marchand guided Arizona State to its first-ever national title, he turned professional prior to his dominating Olympic performance, and other men have closed the gap Marchand built on everyone else in history in the 500 free. In November, Carson Foster clocked 4:05.81 to break the American record, and minutes later, Rex Maurer crushed that mark with a time of 4:04.45. Interestingly, both those men now train under Bowman’s guidance at Texas.
Of course, Marchand is still two seconds ahead of anyone else all-time in an off-event, and even with Maurer, Hobson and others swimming well, don’t expect that 4:02 to be touched anytime soon.