NANTERRE, France — Léon Marchand has said he likes the silence underwater. That moment when he finishes a lap, flips his body over, presses his feet upon the wall and fires himself forward. Down there, he’s on his own, even if his country, and the world, are watching.
For 15 meters Wednesday night, after coming to the final lap of the 200-meter butterfly nearly a full second behind Hungary’s Kristóf Milák, Marchand was submerged for what seemed like forever. Meanwhile, out in the air, the people of France made a sound like you’ve never heard.
The wait ended when Marchand broke the surface of the water, 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 turned a young man into something these Olympics so desperately needed.
UNREAL. LEON MARCHAND WITH AN INCREDIBLE COMEBACK TO IGNITE THE CROWD IN PARIS. 🇫🇷#ParisOlympics | 📺 NBC & Peacock pic.twitter.com/oErY1zMUvu
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 31, 2024
Every epic needs a hero, the superhuman who descends from another world with abilities we can’t quite comprehend and an ineffable way to be what everyone wants exactly when they want it.
That, six days into the 2024 Paris Olympics, is Marchand.
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 terra-cotta houses, a half-million people and a view of the Pyrenees Mountains. Marchand was promising, sure, but no one pegged him as a mega-prodigy destined to be the face of these Games.
That he’s emerged as exactly that makes this feel all the more sincere. Paris is in love. The kind of love they sing about in songs. Idealistic. Frenzied. Most importantly, requited. He is theirs. They are his.
First came Sunday, when thousands stood in a winding line hours before La Défense Arena opened its doors, all in anticipation of seeing Marchand go for gold in his premier event — the 400 IM. Once inside, they delivered an energy that turned from anticipatory to something else entirely. A heartbeat. Marchand got to the block, put his head down and realized what was in front of him. He said later, “I opened my eyes, I listened to everything going on around me.” The race began and the 22-year-old was propelled.
Marchand touched the wall in 4:02.95, nearly six seconds ahead of runner-up Tomoyuki Matsushita of Japan. He broke Michael Phelps’ Olympic record with Phelps calling the race from the NBC broadcast booth. This was not only Marchand’s first gold medal. It was his first Olympic medal of any kind.
Leon Marchand wins 400m IM gold in front of an electric crowd in Paris! 🇫🇷🥇#ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/ailjAYfzPY
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 28, 2024
Tuesday morning, with a one-day interlude to allow a national hangover to pass, Marchand returned to La Défense like a knight riding back from a quest. The crowd could hardly contain itself, sitting through other heats in the 200m butterfly and 200m breaststroke, waiting for Marchand’s go. The noise began when they knew he was on the way. Then he emerged from the tunnel to the pool deck to the sound of thunder.
“LÉ—ON!”
clap-clap-clap
“LÉ—ON!”
clap-clap-clap
Marchand did enough in both heats to set the stage for Wednesday.
Fans began catching trains around mid-to-late afternoon, making their way to the western suburb of Nanterre. It would be an agonizingly long wait to see their man swim again. An 8:30 p.m. start time at La Défense. One fan with a giant cutout of Marchand’s face boarded a train at Saint-Lazare station at 3:30.
The crowd swelled as the arena opened its doors 90 minutes before the start of the session. Scalpers offered Category C tickets (i.e., nosebleeds) for 300 euros. Two solo strangers were interested and debated whether they should buy them together and agreed to the deal. One of them, Stefan, said, “People told me I was crazy when I said I was going to try.” By night’s end, that 300 euros sounded like a bargain to see history. So did the 1,000 euros scalpers were asking 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-eyed and full-throated. Atop the podium, Marchand only scanned the space and smiled. Stepping off the podium, while Milák and Canada’s Ilya Kharun began walking a lap around the pool for the traditional salute, Marchand pointed to the nearest corner exit and walked out.
When he returned for his nightcap, the ovation felt like a thank you. A thank you for what he’d already done. And a thank you for what everyone seemingly knew he was about to do. A 2:05.85. Another Olympic record, one set in a delirious final 50 meters with the crowd lurching closer and closer until they were all in the pool with him.
“Marchand’s march to greatness CONTINUES!” 🇫🇷
Leon Marchand just can’t be stopped in his home country. He wins gold in the men’s 200m breaststroke. #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/DEAEFeIxG4
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 31, 2024
“I think that was why I was able to win that race,” Marchand said later. “By taking that energy.”
The first swimmer in history to win the 200 butterfly and breaststroke in the same Games thrust himself out of the water and onto the deck.
Marchand pointed to the people. The people pointed back.
The kind of love that was a long time coming.
Marchand’s appeal comes at exactly the right time and for all the right reasons. It’s not just the results, the times, the medals. It’s Marchand in all his parts. His father, Xavier, swam in the world championships for France. His mother, Céline Bonnet, swam in the Olympics for France.
Yet, Léon doesn’t necessarily look like a star who can blot out the sun. He isn’t as tall as Phelps. His arms aren’t as long as Ryan Lochte’s. He’s 6 feet 2 and, when standing alongside fellow Olympic swimmers, he looks, well, relatively normal. He’s shy, unintimidating. 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,” says Herbie Behm, an Arizona State assistant coach (now head coach) under Bob Bowman during Marchand’s time in Tempe, “is something I had never seen before, until him.”
Léon Marchand celebrates his 200-meter breaststroke gold medal, his third of these Olympics as he’s become the French star of their home Games. (Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
Every good love story has a twist; that time apart, when the raison d’être becomes clear, that the two are meant together.
For Marchand, that time was spent in the United States. No one was exactly sure 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 form Phelps.
“When he decided to come to ASU, he was a good swimmer, but he wasn’t, like — the best,” Behm says. “But then it was like, ‘Oh, dang, this kid qualified for the Olympics.’ And then it was, ‘Oh, this kid just got sixth in the Olympics.”
James Don, then a fellow Arizona State freshman, swam in the lane opposite Marchand for the first swim of his first practice. Don ended up swimming on one side down the pool, eyes transfixed on Marchand. The mobility of his ankles. The snap 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 near him.”
Marchand’s three years at Arizona State turned the program into a powerhouse, but more than that, took the boy out of France. Xavier Marchand swam collegiately at Auburn and Léon was encouraged to go abroad, be on his own, grow up. Tempe was the obvious choice because of Bowman.
The byproduct of that time couldn’t have been understood in the beginning but can be seen now. Marchand’s most formative years, from 19 to 22, were spent wonderfully in a desert of attention. He matured from an internationally elite swimmer to a soon-to-be 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 traps 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 he showed up to swim meets carrying a Louis Vuitton bag and wearing an Omega watch. Both companies signed on as sponsors as he emerged as a favorite for gold in 2024.
This summer was always the endgame. Marchand was meant to be the face of these Olympics. Earlier this week, when Don, Marchand’s roommate in Tempe, arrived in Paris, paying his own way to see his pal compete, his ride share pulled out of Charles de Gaulle Airport and onto the highway. The first thing he saw outside the window? Léon’s face on a skyscraper.
That’s the pressure Marchand walked into in these Games. An unceasing attention that carries a weight you couldn’t imagine carrying.
But Marchand did so without ever blinking, let alone buckling. It was as if he, himself, was also being carried.
Sometimes silence loves the noise.
GO DEEPER
Meet Léon Marchand, the ‘French Michael Phelps’ ready to rule his home Olympics
(Top photo of Léon Marchand on the podium after his 200-meter breaststroke win: Quinn Rooney / Getty Images)
