Two gold in 118 minutes: The French super-fish who overshadowed Australia

Leon Marchand came to these Games as Le Dauphin of world swimming – the next in line to a throne that was long occupied by Michael Phelps and has sat vacant, waiting for someone to again rewrite what is possible in this sport.

At Paris la Défense Arena on Wednesday night, we witnessed two races, two breathtaking results and one glorious, cacophonous coronation. The last rock star to play at this arena before they installed the pools was Taylor Swift. With apologies to all Swifties reading, you have never seen a show quite like this.

Rewriting what is possible: France’s Leon Marchand.Credit: Getty Images

To understand the noise that built beneath the roof of this stadium as Marchand set off in pursuit of the best butterfly swimmer of his generation, building to a crescendo that cymbal-crashed into the final 15 metres of a stunning 200m race, you need to think back to what it was like when Ian Thorpe dived into the Sydney Olympic pool.

As Marchand pulled ahead of Hungary’s Olympic and world champion and world record-holder Kristof Milak with just a few strokes to go, the pool and steel girders far above fairly shook with the sound of 40,000 people screaming for one man to reach the wall first. “Le-e-on! Le-e-on!”

Long after the water had stilled, our ears were still ringing.

In response, Marchand looked up at the stands, smiled and gave his right index finger a little waggle.

This was only part one of our play.

What happened next is something that not even the great Phelps attempted at an Olympic Games, let alone pulled off.

Marchand, the 22-year-old son of two Olympic swimmers, is a rare, hybrid talent who excels in both butterfly and breaststroke. After the last world champions, he decided he wanted to have a crack at winning both 200m events at his home Olympics.

The coach of both Phelps and Marchand, Bob Bowman, never let the greatest swimmer in history try to compete in two individual events on the same day of an Olympic competition. To allow Marchand to attempt it here, Bowman and the French Swimming Federation lobbied the sport’s governing body, World Aquatics, to change Wednesday’s schedule.

Leon Marchand en route to a double gold.Credit: AP

What was originally a 15-minute break between the two events was stretched to a scheduled hour and 50 minutes, allowing time for Marchand to perform his opening, four-lap set of butterfly, exit stage right, cool down in the adjacent pool, return to the arena to accept his gold medal and belt out La Marseillaise and exit again to take his spot in the marshall’s room for his breaststroke encore.

And what an encore it was.

It is here that we introduce Zac Stubblety-Cook, an unassuming mainstay of our national swimming team who at the Tokyo Games became the first Australian in 57 years to win Olympic gold in the 200m breaststroke.

Australian hopes rested with Stubblety-Cook on what was a mixed night for the Dolphins despite high hopes, with silver for Kyle Chalmers in the men’s 100 metres freestyle and Mollie O’Callaghan and Shayna Jack missing the podium in the women’s 100 metres.

Having seen off the swimmer assumed to be his strongest rival in this event – China’s world record-holder Qin Haiyang – Stubblety-Cook stepped out of a bitter rivalry into a beautiful one. He later said his favourite moment of the night was walking onto the pool deck and hearing the stadium explode as Marchand followed him out.

Such was the racket that he couldn’t hear the clunk of the starting block as he shifted it into place.

“Watching him have his moment and soaking up his moment was awesome,” he said. “I think it is great for the sport of swimming and it is great to hear the better part of 50,000 people chanting one person’s name.

“He is probably on the cusp of being arguably one of the greatest swimmers. I think we are only just seeing the beginning of Leon.”

Leon Marchand salutes his second win of the night ahead of Australian Zac Stubblety-Cook and Caspar Corbeau of the Netherlands.Credit: AP

From the moment the two swimmers left the blocks, Marchand was propelled not just by the quixotic combination of ballistic strength and technical grace that makes up the breaststroke, but the extra power that comes from knowing an entire stadium was willing him through the water.

“Every time I took a breath I could hear this huge noise,” he said. “It was pretty cool.”

“I’m a really shy person, first. And I was really in the centre of attention in those two races. I was trying to get energy from the whole crowd. They were really amazing to me.″⁣

Bowman, who helped take Phelps to the top of world swimming and keep him there for more than a decade, said the immediate challenge for Marchand is Thursday’s 200m individual medley and beyond these Games, what will inevitably come next.

“I think he can improve quite a bit,” Bowman said. “The key thing for him, which sadly I know about and he doesn’t know about yet, is he has got to survive the success.”

Bowman couldn’t remember ever seeing a swimmer win two individual events at the same Olympic Games. The last person to do it was Kornelia Ender, an East German swimmer who won the 200m freestyle in Montreal in 1976 and, 28 minutes later, the 100m butterfly. That was nearly 60 years ago, at the height of East Germany’s doping regime.

When Marchand won his first Olympic gold medal at this pool on Sunday night in the 400m individual medley, he was greeted beneath the stands by France’s caretaker Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and, shortly after, received a phone call from President Emmanuel Macron.

Moving around the city, you cannot miss his golden curls and dimpled smile, whether it is beaming down from a billboard or flogging the latest Swiss timepiece.

It is something of an Olympic sport to pick the athlete who will make the Games their own. Think Carl Lewis in LA, Michael Johnson in Atlanta, Cathy Freeman in Sydney or Usain Bolt in Beijing. It is too early to say who will own Paris 2024, but anyone who witnessed what Marchand did in the butterfly and the breaststroke in one night will forever remember the sound it made.

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