EGN NEWS DESK
The French swimmer Léon Marchand understood that he can be his nation’s marquee athlete on the Paris Games, and he certainly is. Event employees cease him to sneak in selfies. An enormous picture of him on the beginning blocks adorns a skyscraper. Cameras are skilled on him all over the place he goes.
But Marchand’s star flip didn’t start simply this week. Even within the months main as much as the Games, his rising fame was evident hundreds of miles away in Arizona, the place he was swimming for Arizona State. After a highway meet on the University of Arizona, followers lined as much as have him signal no matter they’d useful — a swim cap, Nike Jordans, a scrap of paper.
He was requested if this occurred at each meet.
“Just this yr,” he stated.
Marchand, 22, has ascended to the highest of the swimming world simply in time for his house nation to host the Games, and as one in every of France’s greatest — and earliest — hopes for Olympic gold.
Carrying the burden of a nation’s hopes might be an uncommonly heavy burden for any athlete, and Marchand won’t bear it alone, after all. Victor Wembanyama, the 7-foot-4 sensation who simply accomplished his rookie season with the N.B.A.’s San Antonio Spurs, will lead France’s males’s basketball staff. Teddy Riner, the most effective judokas in historical past, will look to say a medal at a sixth straight Games. The World Cup winner Thierry Henry is teaching France’s males’s soccer staff, and the stress to ship might be simply as intense in a handful of sports activities — rugby, biking, tennis — that France loves probably the most.
But swimming is likely one of the Olympics’ marquee occasions, and that’s turning a special sort of highlight on Marchand, whose profile has grown exponentially because the day final summer season when he broke Michael Phelps’s final remaining world file by greater than a second. He is entered in 4 particular person occasions in Paris, and is a risk to win a medal in all of them.
His first probability may come Sunday in his signature occasion, the one he used to knock Phelps out of the file e book: the 400-meter particular person medley.
“It does really feel bizarre,” Marchand stated. “Because once I went to Tokyo, I used to be no one. I used to be only a random swimmer. Just joyful to be within the closing. This yr goes to be completely different as a result of I need to win gold. And it’s at house.”
Pool Genes
It is not any shock that swimming — and even butterfly, the game’s most tough stroke — got here naturally to Marchand: Both his mom, Céline Bonnet, and his father, Xavier Marchand, have been Olympic swimmers for France.
Marchand was 4 or 5 when his dad and mom enticed him to swim 25 meters of butterfly of their native pool in Toulouse, France, by promising him McDonald’s if he may make it throughout with out stopping or clinging to the sting. He simply earned his fast-food reward. But as a result of his dad and mom additionally had a eager understanding of the dedication the game requires, they took care by no means to drive it upon both of their two sons. (Léon’s youthful brother, Oscar, discovered that he appreciated swim meets however not the coaching, so he determined to play basketball as a substitute.)
Marchand even give up swimming for a pair years as a baby, partly as a result of he was bored: He was a lot sooner than his teammates in practices that he usually discovered himself spending far an excessive amount of of his time ready on the wall, shivering, for them to catch up.
He ultimately returned to the pool, however when Paris gained the internet hosting rights to this summer season’s Games in 2017, Marchand was solely simply beginning to take the game extra critically. The thought of swimming in an Olympics, not to mention being a face of 1, wasn’t tangible. Within two years, although, he started to interrupt via on a world stage, successful a bronze medal on the world junior championships in 2019 and setting a nationwide file within the course of.
In 2020, going through a crossroads, Marchand made two choices: He started to work with a psychological coach to deal with the nervousness that he felt was holding him again. And he despatched a chilly electronic mail to a coach he thought would possibly be capable to information him to the highest.
That coach was Bob Bowman, a person who had loads of expertise with the Olympics and excessive expectations: He had coached Phelps for all 28 of his Olympic medals.
Marchand was trying to swim for a university program within the United States, and he requested Bowman, who was then the pinnacle coach at Arizona State University, if he would possibly take into account having him on his staff. The coach’s solely familiarity with the Marchand title at that time was Marchand’s father, Xavier, however he regarded up Léon’s instances and was excited by his potential.
“I had no thought he’d be this good,” Bowman stated.
Success, although, was not a straight line. In the months after setting his first French file, and earlier than he reached out to Bowman, Marchand stated he started experiencing stress and nervousness earlier than meets. In the spring of 2020, he started working with Thomas Sammut, a psychological efficiency coach for the Olympic dash champion Florent Manaudou and different high French athletes. Sammut stated Marchand instructed him that he felt as if he was swimming in concern of performing poorly.
“When we first began speaking, he had requested me if this excessive stage essentially meant residing with this fixed rigidity,” Sammut wrote in an electronic mail interview that was translated to English. “Not in any respect,” Sammut reassured him, including that “he may select his personal path.”
They began talking recurrently. Marchand discovered to make use of respiration workouts to focus himself earlier than races and calm himself at bedtime. But the inspiration of their work, Sammut stated, was altering Marchand’s outlook from swimming in pursuit of outcomes to in search of private {and professional} happiness via a sport that challenged him.
That would jibe with the message Marchand was quickly getting from Bowman: The problem of the Olympics, the coach instructed his new star pupil, shouldn’t be essentially swimming the occasions. It is swimming the occasions in a loud and high-stakes surroundings.
When Marchand arrived in Tempe, Ariz., it felt like “the opposite facet of the planet” to him, however that was what he had in thoughts. He blended in among the many different college students his age, attending laptop science lessons, enjoying video video games and studying to like hamburgers, and he started to shed his shyness. He constructed belief in Bowman, who in one in every of their first conversations had supplied Phelps’ warm-up routine when Marchand talked about he was battling warming up for races. He has used it at each meet since.
Putting apart the inherent unfairness of any Phelps comparability, Marchand has his personal model within the pool. He’s equally gifted within the 200-meter breaststroke and butterfly occasions, a pairing so unusual that the finals of each might be contested on the identical evening. (The French swimming federation efficiently lobbied for extra time between the occasions to provide Marchand his greatest probability for medals in each.)
His 6-foot-2 body shouldn’t be notably imposing, however Bowman describes him as “fishlike” within the water. Phelps, who referred to as Marchand’s record-breaking 400 I.M. race stay for NBC eventually yr’s world championships, deemed it a “excellent” swim.
“Bob is giving him the methods,” Phelps cheered from the printed sales space as Marchand inched nearer to erasing his final world file. He identified that even on the grueling occasion’s closing flip, Marchand had undulated underwater for the total distance allowed by the principles, a certain signal of Bowman’s tutelage.
And earlier than he offered Marchand with the gold medal, one in every of three he gained on the worlds, they talked about how Marchand may go even sooner. Marchand’s freestyle break up, the previous record-holder instructed the brand new one, was practically a second-and-a-half slower than Phelps’s had been.
Showtime
Marchand’s first preview of what this Olympics could also be like for him got here final June in Rennes, France. He had returned for the qualifying meet for the world championships and located followers ready for him outdoors the pool within the small metropolis in northwest France.
“That was sort of surprising,” Marchand stated. “I simply needed to deal with my races and stuff. But you’ll be able to’t actually try this. You can’t ignore individuals. I’m nonetheless studying.”
His dad and mom stated that Léon’s rising recognition during the last yr generally scares them. “We attempt as laborious as we are able to to guard him and maintain him sane. Live like a traditional household, actually,” Xavier and Céline wrote in an electronic mail.
Other French athletes have spoken in regards to the stress they may face at this Games. In an interview with French media, Wembanyama stated that if the French staff doesn’t win gold, “I might see it as a failure if I feel we may have performed higher.” Riner, the French judoka, acknowledged that every one of his earlier success now pales compared to the problem — and the expectations — he’ll carry right into a Games on house soil.
“I do know the feeling, the sensation of successful a gold medal,” he stated in an interview at a New York Times trend convention earlier this month. “But, in Paris, with the household and associates, it’s very completely different. That means loads of stress. So I have to win this medal.”
That identical problem is in entrance of Marchand. It has been years within the making, however so has his preparation: in mile after mile within the pool below Bowman’s professional gaze, and in his classes with Sammut, who has reminded him that stress is subjective, and that Marchand can course of it in his personal method. His method?
“It’s going to be like a party, a swimming party,” Marchand stated. “All the most effective swimmers might be there simply to race as quick as they will.”
Steven Moity contributed reporting. Alain Delaqueriere contributed analysis.
