Noise is part of her fuel. Allez’s rhythmic, energetic chant every time her head emerged from the water Wednesday night as she raced to victory in the 200-meter breaststroke, her second gold in just a few hours.
The already known version of La Marseillaise sung for the character who is the face of France at these Olympic Games, with ‘Marchons, marchons…’ adapted to ‘Marchand, Marchand’.
Let’s count the ways in which France declared its love for Leon Marchand the morning after he won gold in the 200m butterfly and breaststroke.
‘Tout Puissant’ (‘All Powerful’), read the cover of Aujourd’hui en France. ‘Marchand d’Histoire’ (‘History Maker’), concluded L’Equipe.
It seems that the destiny of a city has been fulfilled, as it has dropped a huge image of its 22-year-old swimming genius, crouched in the starting position, wearing a bathing cap and goggles, on the Tour Montparnasse skyscraper in the south of Paris. Marchand is everywhere.
French swimmer Léon Marchand has become one of the poster boys for this summer’s Olympic Games.
The 22-year-old claimed her first gold medal by winning the 400m individual medley in Paris.
Marchand comes from a family of athletes, with both parents being Olympic swimmers.
That an individual who had never before won an Olympic medal should provide moments that will be remembered here 100 years from now seems a miracle, though it is no mere coincidence, of course.
Many factors – technical, psychological, dietary and, of course, genetic – form the story behind the story of the boy from Toulouse who, unknown to the rest of the world, joined Michael Phelps, Ian Thorpe and Mark Spitz in the pantheon.
Genetics, because she was born into a family of swimmers, with Olympic parents. Her mother, Céline Bonnet, competed in the 1992 Games; her father, Xavier Marchand, was an Olympic finalist in 1996 and 2000.
Xavier’s older brother, Christophe, also swam at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics. He is said to bring his parents’ swimming skills to the pool.
The buoyancy of his mother, with a high and light position in the water. And, gradually, because he is not an individual with a big ego and presence, the drive of his father.
But no father can bequeath the good that places him on a different plane.
This is what they call Marchand’s “fifth style”: the dolphins’ own ability, invisible to spectators but revealed by underwater cameras, to swim with extraordinary strength underwater.
Swimmers are faster down below the surface because there is less resistance from the water. Marchand’s coaches have said he began working on this technique because he was a smaller, less robust teenager than others.
It’s not as simple as it seems. Top swimmers explain that when they are underwater, their lungs “burn” and that, when they stop breathing, they suffer an intense headache.
Some swimmers are stunned by Marchand’s ability to operate down there for so long. “He’s Poseidon! I swear, he’s Aquaman,” said backstroke swimmer Yohann Ndoye-Brouard. “You wonder, ‘How can he have so much air to stay underwater?’
But the benefits were graphically demonstrated in Marchand’s 200-metre butterfly final. When he disappeared under the water at the final turn, he was trailing Olympic champion and world record holder Kristof Milak.
When his swimming cap reappeared on the surface, he was almost ahead. It was an impossible moment. A disappearing trick. A moment of breathtaking drama that will possibly surpass any other at these Olympics.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal encouraged Marchand to win his first Olympic gold
The French swimming sensation wants to emulate the greatest athlete of all time, Michael Phelps
Phelps was also a king of the deep, often winning his duels with Dutch legend Pieter van den Hoogenband thanks to underwater sections after each turn.
But coach Bob Bowman, who worked with Phelps and now drives Marchand, says the French swimmer is better than the American in the long swim. While Phelps brought raw power and strength, Marchand also has a different body shape.
“His body is perfectly shaped,” Bowman told Le Monde. “He’s like a torpedo. He has no hips. He’s like he’s standing straight.”
The extensive aerobic component of his training, which allowed Marchand to stay submerged for 45 seconds during his thrilling 400m individual medley final on Sunday – almost a quarter of the race – also explains his remarkable recovery times.
Her tolerance for lactic acid buildup during a race meant she needed an hour and 50 minutes of recovery, part of which was spent at a medal ceremony, between Wednesday’s finals.
To cover the enormous energy expenditure of a training regimen that involves swimming perhaps 8 miles, six or seven days a week, Marchand needs to consume roughly 8,000 to 10,000 calories a day.
For Marchand, dinner is usually a combination of pasta and chicken, and as a college student, he makes his own. “My whole life, everything I do during the day is to be better the next day in the water,” he has said of his diet.
But Marchand also puts a lot of value on a better mindset between races. He has described his fear of failure at the Tokyo Olympics, when, aged 19, he returned without a medal.
He often talks about his psychological coach, Thomas Sammut, who has encouraged him to think only about his own performance, rather than the race as a whole. “Control the controllable.”
Coach Bob Bowman said his body is perfect: “He’s like a torpedo. He has no hips.”
The rigors of his training routine are turning Marchand into the next big thing in world swimming.
Many in France feel that Marchand’s decision to leave the country to swim at an American university (she competes for Arizona State University) has reduced the intense expectation and media scrutiny that would have come with living in France during the build-up to the Olympics.
The routine there is brutal. For six days a week, Marchand – a computer programming student – gets up at 5.20 in the morning to swim between five and seven kilometres per session.
But he has escaped the pressure in a country where no swimmer has previously won multiple individual gold medals at a single Games.
Marchand returned to the Olympic pool in La Defense yesterday to swim a series of the 200-meter individual medley.
Britain’s Duncan Scott, the hero of the gold medal-winning relay team, pipped him into second place, but no one is betting on Marchand not taking his fourth gold medal tonight.
Paris is once again awaiting the arrival of a character that L’Equipe describes as “The Extraordinary. Monsieur Tout Le Monde”. The man who has everything.