Léon Marchand, Katie Ledecky and an evening worthy of Olympic swimming tradition

August 1, 2024

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Léon Marchand, Katie Ledecky and an evening worthy of Olympic swimming tradition

NANTERRE, France — Even Léon Marchand wasn’t sure he could actually do what he wanted to do: win two golds on the same night at the Olympic Games.

It would be a “surprise” to him if he succeeded, he said. And that’s why he wanted to try.

So he signed up to swim an unprecedented double—the brutally grueling 200-meter butterfly, followed two hours later by the grueling 200-meter breaststroke—to test his body and mind. That he would volunteer for a challenge like this in the first place is what makes the young Frenchman impressive. That he overtook the world record holder to win one final and dominated the field to win the other by nearly a second is what already makes him one of the best Olympic swimmers in history.

That’s also what we love about sports. We walk into buildings like Paris La Défense Arena on nights like Wednesdays without knowing what we’re going to see. We hope it’s something we’ll never forget.

Thousands of French fans witnessed one of the greatest sporting events of their lives. Thousands of Americans watched Katie Ledecky win the eighth Olympic gold medal of her career in her most dominant event, a feat that ties her with Jenny Thompson for the most gold medals for an American woman. If she wins another one—and she is the odds-on favorite for the 800-meter freestyle event yet to come—she will tie Russian gymnast Larisa Latynina for the most gold medals for a female Olympian. Michael Phelps is the only person on the planet to have won more than nine Olympic gold medals.

And if that wasn’t enough to justify the price of admission to this particular evening session, how about a world record in the men’s 100 meters, freestyle by China’s Pan Zhanle? His gold medal-winning time of 46.40 seconds was also the first world record set here at the Paris Games, an exclamation point on a night that didn’t even need punctuation marks.

Home favorite Léon Marchand confirmed his star status with an epic night that saw him win two gold medals in swimming, something he hadn’t done since 1976. (Christian Liewig/Corbis via Getty Images)

We’ve all spent the first half of this week wondering what was wrong with the pool and why the times were so slow. The American swimmers have been asked about their piles of silver and bronze medals that aren’t as gold as they usually are.

But this is a sport that always delivers on this stage, and there are few nights in Olympic history that can compare to what unfolded here on Wednesday. No Olympic swimmer in 48 years had won two individual gold medals on the same day. No swimmer had ever won a medal in both the individual butterfly and breaststroke at the same Games. Until Marchand did it … on the same day. Both golds. In Olympic record swimming.

No swimmer had won at least one gold medal in four Olympic Games until Ledecky did it here Wednesday. And she did it in an event in which she has swum the 20 fastest times in world history, the 1,500-meter freestyle.

“I try not to think too much about history,” Ledecky said.

But the rest of us do. We love those moments when history is in the making. We take screenshots of the screen when Ledecky is the only swimmer on screen, having beaten the rest of the field by 10 seconds or more. We can’t look away when it seems like an entire country is serenading its 22-year-old hero on stage as the national anthem plays. We can’t forget the cheers we heard for Zhanle’s world record, or the deafening roar of Marchand’s comeback in the final 50 meters when he equaled and then surpassed Kristóf Milák.

“I knew it was possible for me to finish the races, but maybe not win them,” Marchand said. “I never knew (if I could win both).”

But he tried. And he did. This is the magic, and these are the moments that last forever.