Paris Olympics 2024: How hosts have stacked the deck against Aussie’s gold medal defence
Australia’s swimmers are out to match their incredible gold medal haul from Tokyo at the Paris Olympics, but have been thrown a massive curveball to benefit the host-nation’s brightest hope.
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The chances of Australia’s swimmers matching their incredible gold medal haul from Tokyo at this year’s Paris Olympics have been thrown a massive curveball after organisers altered the race schedule just to benefit the host-nation’s brightest hope.
He may not be a household name in Australia yet but if everything goes according to the plans of his high-powered supporters, French swimming sensation Leon Marchand could emerge from the Paris Olympics as the sport’s next global megastar.
Not only is the 21-year-old unbeatable in the water - but he’s just pulled off a major coup outside of the pool - after officials agreed to rearrange the Olympic finals program to boost his chances of winning four gold medals.
At last year’s world championships, Marchand won three golds - in the 200m butterfly, 200m individual medley and 400m individual medley - where he demolished Michael Phelps’ last remaining world record.
That was already an incredible achievement but the ambitious Frenchmen and his minders let it be known he wanted to go one better in Paris and add a fourth event - the 200m breaststroke - the same race Australia’s Zac Stubblety-Cook won in Tokyo.
The problem for Marchand was the 200m butterfly and 200m backstroke finals were scheduled to take place back-to-back at the La Defense Arena in western Paris, making it virtually impossible to compete in both.
That was until Olympic organisers suddenly announced a rare, late change to the program, pushing the 200m breaststroke final back by more than an hour after the completion of the 200m butterfly final, giving the local champion enough time to recover to have a shot at both.
Sources have told this masthead that French swimming officials and Marchand’s influential coach Bob Bowman - who was also the mastermind behind Phelps’ Olympic success - have been lobbying World Aquatics since last year to request the change.
They agreed but it still needed to be signed off by the International Olympic Committee and their broadcast partners, who have only just announced the reschedule, less than five months before the Opening Ceremony.
While schedule changes are not unprecedented - the decision to alter the program for one swimmer and not others will inevitably raise questions about fairness and whether Marchand has been given preferential treatment to appease the French.
The tweak to the program certainly hasn’t done any favours for Stubblety-Cook, the only Australian male swimmer who won gold in Tokyo, but the Dolphins have benefited from program changes before.
At the Sydney Olympics, local organisers asked for the men’s 400m freestyle be switched from the middle of the meet to the opening night to give the Australian nation a lift.
It worked a treat when Ian Thorpe broke his own world record to win the country’s first gold in Sydney anchored the Australian men’s 4x100m freestyle relay to a historic victory over the United States.
As great as he is, and even with the aid of the new schedule, the odds of Marchand winning both races in Paris are still slim because no-one, not even Phelps, has ever managed to win two individual events in swimming on the same day or night at the Olympics.
Marchand is head and shoulders above his opponents in the medleys but faces tough challenges in both butterfly and breaststroke.
Although he won the 200m butterfly world title last year, Hungarian world record holder Kristof Milak was absent and is expected to return at his peak for Paris.
And the 200m breaststroke presents an even bigger challenge for Marchand, who has never swum the event at a major international meet but demonstrated his untapped potential when he posted the eighth fastest time in history at last year’s French championships.
Not only be up against Stubblety-Cook but also Qin Haiyang, who broke the Australian’s world record to claim the world title last year, and is among a new wave of Chinese men who are also threatening to gatecrash the Olympic pool party.
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Originally published as Paris Olympics 2024: How hosts have stacked the deck against Aussie’s gold medal defence
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