Paris Olympics, Day 7 Finals: Leon Marchand Dominates 200 IM Final For Fourth Gold, Scares World Record With 1:54.06
The ambitious program that Leon Marchand and coach Bob Bowman mapped out for the Paris Olympics, meant that three days would define if the 22-year-old Frenchman vaulted from the best all-around swimmer in the world to all-time great status before concluding his second trip to the Games.
The 400 individual medley was never going to be a true test, and indeed Marchand won by six seconds. Three days later, matched against single-stroke specialists who were defending champions in their best events, he pulled off one dramatic come-from-behind victory and dominated another final. Preordained as a national hero of these Games, crowds chanting his name from the moment he debuted, Marchand faced pressure to be flawless under circumstances almost no other athletes feel.
He has done just that.
Now, Marchand has gold medal No. 4, not that any doubts remained when swimmers stepped to the blocks for the men’s 200 IM final. No one, even defending gold medalist Wang Shun of China or British veteran Duncan Scott, was going to overcome Marchand’s combination of skill, psyche and crowd support on this night.
Wang actually had the lead at the first wall, but that melted away quickly as Marchand blasted off the turn. He reached the halfway point ahead of the field and seven hundredths ahead of world-record pace. On breaststroke, the crowd resumed its chant of “Allez!” each time Marchand popped out of the water, and he split a mind-boggling 32.36 to build up a lead of 1.73 seconds. At that point, he was six tenths under world-record pace, the 1:54.00 of Ryan Lochte, untouched for 13 years, in serious jeopardy.
Splashing to the wall with his fingertips reaching for the world-record line superimposed on screens, Marchand touched in 1:54.06, the second-fastest time in history and just six hundredths off the global mark. His best time was faster than anything that the last of Bowman’s all-time great pupils, Michael Phelps, ever achieved.
As the crowd showered him with adoration, Marchand lifted himself straight out of the pool, eschewing the traditional float over the lane lines to the side walls, and basked in the glory for the fourth time this week.
“It’s been unbelievable,” Marchand said. “Four gold medals is not what I thought I could possibly do. I was trying to win one at first. I had four chances of doing it. So after the 400 IM, I was really relaxed by the crazy race that I just did. Four gold medals, I didn’t know it was possible.”
In the battle for silver, Scott pulled ahead of Wang with a 33.20 breaststroke split, almost a full second behind Marchand but second-best in the field, and Scott also had the top closing split as he finished in 1:55.31. That earned Scott his second consecutive Olympic silver in this event, his time only three hundredths slower than his personal best from Tokyo.
“I really had to put myself in a good position at 150. I couldn’t just rely on my freestyle. I had to challenge myself because at this level, you can’t swim over people all the time,” Scott said. “To be at my best when it really matters, I’m really happy with that.”
Wang returned to the podium for the third consecutive Games, capturing bronze in 1:56.00. American Carson Foster split 27.83 on freestyle to nearly catch Wang, but he ended up a tenth behind, continuing a streak of three consecutive races where Americans finished fourth, with less than two tenths combined separating the three Americans from medals.
- World Record: Ryan Lochte, USA – 1:54.00 (2011)
- Olympic Record: Michael Phelps, USA – 1:54.23 (2008)
- Tokyo Olympic Champion: Wang Shun, China – 1:55.00
Leon Marchand — Photo Courtesy: Deepbluemedia
With the win, Marchand pulled off the IM double that he previously achieved at the 2022 and 2023 World Championships. Sweeping the IM events events has been a fairly common occurrence in Olympic swimming; the 200 IM had only been included on the racing schedule at 12 previous Games, and the list of swimmers to win both include Charlie Hickcox, Gunnar Larson, Alex Baumann, Tamás Darnyi (twice) and Phelps (twice).
But in more rarefied air, Marchand becomes only the third male swimmer ever to win four individual gold medals at one Olympics. Previously, Mark Spitz won four in 1972, a feat which was unmatched until Phelps won four in 2004 and five in 2008. Only one other man has won three, Caeleb Dressel in 2021, and Kristin Otto is the only woman to win four. “That’s crazy,” Marchand said. “Those guys are legends.”
Marchand handled the pressure he faced as a home-country star by thinking of the meet, “like it was a Christmas gift that I can open only on the first day, which was the 400 IM. Then I was surprised every day.” He added, “it was a lot of pressure. I’m not used to that. I don’t think anybody can be used to that. I was trying to take it positive and ignore the negative stuff.”
Race after race, Marchand did it with aplomb. Most reasonable swimmers would avoid comparisons to Phelps, retort that no one can compare to the 23-time Olympic champion. Marchand loves it, embracing a comparison that is effectively impossible to live up to. “Michael is a swimming legend,” he said. “I’m always really proud when someone is comparing me to MP. He changed the sport forever.”
Bowman guided Phelps for two decades before he and Marchand teamed up in the fall in 2021, and the biggest similarity he sees between the two is not physical attributes or versatility but their ability to come through when it counts.
“They both figured out how to manage themselves through these big programs, doubles and those kinds of things, and they put forth real quality swims when they needed to do it under the biggest pressure,” Bowman said. “Leon joins Michael in the very rare club of people that when the pressure is higher, they perform better. His performance rises to the pressure. He doesn’t shrink from it.”
The Olympics is designed to prevent perfection over so many different events, with the specialists coming after the multi-event stars at each opportunity. Even Phelps, in one of the top performances in sports history at the 2008 Games, depended on a miracle touch to defeat Milorad Cavic in the 100 fly final. No such luck needed for Marchand in Paris.
“It’s an incredible series of events,” Bowman said. “I feel like he did everything that we could possibly expect of him in this environment, in the leadup and preparation. He couldn’t have handled himself better in all the races. It was just a complete success. In the way I see things, he was 100% successful, so I’m very proud of him.”
He still has a medley relay or two remaining, where he could single-handedly lift France to a medal few predicted. His individual meet is done, and it was more transcendent than Marchand or Bowman could have hoped for.
- EVENT PAGE
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- STREAMING INFO
- DAY 1 PRELIMS RESULTS
- DAY 1 FINALS RESULTS
- DAY 2 PRELIMS RESULTS
- DAY 2 FINALS RESULTS
- DAY 3 PRELIMS RESULTS
- DAY 3 FINALS RESULTS
- DAY 4 PRELIMS RESULTS
- DAY 4 FINALS RESULTS
- DAY 5 PRELIMS RESULTS
- DAY 5 FINALS RESULTS
- DAY 6 PRELIMS RESULTS
- DAY 6 FINALS RESULTS
- DAY 7 PRELIMS RESULTS
- DAY 7 FINALS RESULTS
- DAY 8 PRELIMS RESULTS
- DAY 8 FINALS RESULTS
- DAY 9 FINALS HEAT SHEET
Fantastique !
Magnifique !
King Leon the Lion keeps Marchand on from Gold to Gold to Gold to Gold!!!!
Truly a
GLOBAL SENSATION!