Léon Marchand is the superstar and French sporting hero these Olympic Games needed

July 31, 2024

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Léon Marchand is the superstar and French sporting hero these Olympic Games needed

NANTERRE, France — Léon Marchand said he likes the silence underwater. That moment when he completes a lap, turns his body, puts his feet on the wall and launches himself forward. Down there, he is alone, even though his country and the world are watching.

On Wednesday night, 15 meters long, after coming into the final lap of the 200-meter butterfly almost a whole second behind Hungary’s Kristóf Milák, Marchand was underwater for what seemed like an eternity. Meanwhile, the French in the air were making a noise like you’ve never heard before.

The wait ended when Marchand broke the surface, suddenly neck and neck with Milák. Down in the silence, he made up the difference. Then he rode that noise home for the first of two gold medals on this night that transformed a young man into something these Olympics so desperately needed.

UNREAL. LEON MARCHAND MAKES AN INCREDIBLE COMEBACK TO HEAVYEN THE CROWD IN PARIS. 🇫🇷#Olympic Games in Paris | 📺 NBC & Pauw photo.twitter.com/oErY1zMUvu

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 31, 2024

Every epic needs a hero, a superhuman hero who comes down from another world with abilities we can’t fully comprehend and who can be, in unspeakable ways, whatever anyone wants him to be, exactly when he wants it.

That’s Marchand, six days after the start of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

Paris was awarded the Games in September 2017. Marchand was 15 then, a teenage swimmer in his home in Toulouse, a 2,000-year-old city of terracotta houses, half a million people and views of the Pyrenees. Marchand showed promise, to be sure, but no one had pegged him as a mega-prodigy destined to become the face of these Games.

That he turned out exactly like that makes this all the more sincere. Paris is in love. The kind of love they sing about in songs. Idealistic. Furious. And most importantly, reciprocated. He is theirs. They are his.

First came Sunday, when thousands of people lined up for hours before La Défense Arena opened its doors, all waiting for Marchand to take gold in his flagship event: the 400 IM. Once inside, they gave off an energy that went from anticipation to something else entirely. A heartbeat. Marchand reached the block, bowed his head, and realized what was before him. He later said, “I opened my eyes, I listened to everything that was happening around me.” The race began, and the 22-year-old was propelled forward.

Marchand touched the wall in 4:02.95, nearly six seconds ahead of second-place finisher Tomoyuki Matsushita of Japan. He broke Michael Phelps’ Olympic record, with Phelps reporting the race from the NBC broadcast booth. It wasn’t just Marchand’s first gold medal. It was his first Olympic medal of any kind.

Leon Marchand wins gold in the 400m medley in front of an enthusiastic crowd in Paris! 🇫🇷🥇#Olympic Games in Paris photo.twitter.com/ailjAYfzPY

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 28, 2024

On Tuesday morning, with a day’s pause to let a national hangover pass, Marchand returned to La Défense like a knight riding back from a quest. The crowd could barely contain itself, sitting out other heats in the 200m butterfly and 200m breaststroke, waiting for Marchand’s start. The noise began when they knew he was on his way. Then he emerged from the tunnel onto the pool deck to the sound of thunder.

“AT!”
clap clap clap
“AT!”
clap clap clap

Marchand performed well in both heats to set the tone for Wednesday.

Fans began boarding trains in the mid-afternoon, heading to the western suburb of Nanterre. It would be an excruciatingly long wait to see their man swim again. A start time of 8:30pm at La Défense. A fan with a giant cutout of Marchand’s face boarded the train at Saint-Lazare station at 3:30pm.

The crowd swelled as the arena opened its doors 90 minutes before the session began. Scalpers were offering Category C tickets (nosebleeds) for €300. Two strangers who were alone were interested and considered buying them together and agreed to the deal. One of them, Stefan, said: “People said I was crazy when I said I would try it.” By the end of the night, €300 sounded like a bargain to see history. So did the scalpers who were asking €1,000 for Category A tickets.

Fifty-four minutes after winning the 200m butterfly, Marchand returned to the deck for the medal ceremony. The singing of “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, was clear and full-throated. Up on the podium, Marchand simply looked around and smiled. As Milák and Canadian Ilya Kharun began to circle the pool for the traditional salute, Marchand pointed to the nearest corner exit and walked out.

When he returned for his nightcap, the standing ovation felt like a thank you. A thank you for what he had already done. And a thank you for what everyone seemed to know he was going to do. A 2:05.85. Another Olympic record, set in a frenzied final 50 meters that had the crowd closing in until they were all in the pool with him.

“Marchand’s march to greatness CONTINUES!” 🇫🇷

Leon Marchand is simply unstoppable in his home country, winning gold in the men’s 200m breaststroke. #Olympic Games in Paris photo.twitter.com/DEAEFeIxG4

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 31, 2024

“I think that was the reason I was able to win that race,” Marchand said later. “By taking that energy.”

The first swimmer in history to win the 200-meter butterfly and breaststroke at the same Games jumped out of the water and onto the deck.

Marchand pointed at the people. The people pointed back.

The kind of love we’ve been waiting for.

Marchand’s call comes at the right time and for the right reasons. It’s not just the results, the times, the medals. It’s Marchand in all his parts. His father, Xavier, swam for France at the world championships. His mother, Céline Bonnet, swam for France at the Olympics.

Yet Leon doesn’t necessarily look like a star who can eclipse the sun. He’s not as tall as Phelps. His arms aren’t as long as Ryan Lochte’s. He’s 6’2” and, standing next to other Olympic swimmers, he looks, well, relatively normal. He’s shy, not intimidating. He smiles after races. He has blond hair.

But then he swims. And when Léon Marchand swims, you see something different, and the French feel something different. He moves through the water, not like a fighter, but like a dancer. Every part of his body is under control, perfectly parallel to the bottom of the pool.

“The way he can move his spine,” said Herbie Behm, an assistant coach (now head coach) at Arizona State under Bob Bowman during Marchand’s time in Tempe, “is something I’d never seen before until he saw him.”

Léon Marchand celebrates his gold medal in the 200m breaststroke, his third at these Olympics. He has become the French star of their home games. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

Every good love story has a twist; that period when the reason for their relationship becomes clear, when the two are meant to be together.

For Marchand, that time was spent in the United States. No one knew quite what to make of the Frenchman when he arrived at Arizona State for the 2021-22 school year. He cold-emailed the program before the 2021 Olympics, hoping to train under Bowman, the legendary mind who also helped shape Phelps.

“When he decided to come to ASU, he was a good swimmer, but he wasn’t, like — the best,” Behm said. “But then it was like, ‘Oh, hell, this kid qualified for the Olympics.’ And then it was like, ‘Oh, this kid just finished sixth in the Olympics.'”

James Don, then a fellow Arizona State student, swam in the lane across from Marchand for the first swim of his first practice. Don ended up swimming on one side of the pool, his eyes fixed on Marchand. The mobility of his ankles. The crunch of his feet. The economy of motion.

“He creates a tidal wave,” Don says. “You feel like you’re swimming in open water when you’re around him.”

Marchand’s three years at Arizona State turned the program into a powerhouse, but more than that, they got the kid from France. Xavier Marchand swam collegiately at Auburn, and Léon was encouraged to go overseas, be on his own, and mature. Tempe was the obvious choice for Bowman.

The byproduct of that time could not have been understood at first, but can be seen now. Marchand’s most formative years, from 19 to 22, were spent beautifully in a desert of attention. He grew from an elite international swimmer to a future global superstar, nearly 6,000 miles from home. He would be recognized here and there at Arizona State. Once, a computer science classmate tore a page out of a notebook and asked him to sign it. But nothing like he would be in France.

Isolated from the pitfalls of fame, Marchand was free to focus, free to work. So that’s what he did. The only difference between him and his teammates was that he showed up at swimming meets with a Louis Vuitton bag and an Omega watch. Both companies signed on as sponsors when he emerged as the favorite for gold in 2024.

This summer was always the endgame. Marchand was going to be the face of these Olympics. Earlier this week, when Don, Marchand’s roommate in Tempe, arrived in Paris and paid to watch his buddy compete, his rideshare pulled out of Charles de Gaulle airport onto the freeway. The first thing he saw outside the window? Léon’s face on a skyscraper.

That’s the pressure Marchand faced in these Games. An incessant attention that carries a weight you can’t imagine carrying.

But Marchand did so without blinking once, let alone bowing. It was as if he himself was being carried.

Sometimes silence loves noise.