Leon Marchand fulfilled what French fans might regard as destiny as he swept to a fourth gold medal at his home Paris Games with another dominant victory in the men’s 200m individual medley on Friday.
Roared on by a delirious crowd at La Defense Arena, Marchand took down Michael Phelps’s Olympic record from Beijing 2008 with a blistering swim of 1 minute 54.06 seconds, 0.06 seconds short of Ryan Lochte’s world record.
“It was my last individual final so I said to myself, I really have to enjoy it,” Marchand told reporters.
Photo: AFP
“I had a lot more energy than yesterday so I felt better, more relaxed.
“And I really wanted to have fun in my last final and it happened, so it was huge.”
Britain’s Duncan Scott won the silver, more than a second behind Marchand, while China’s defending champion Wang Shun took the bronze.
The win made Marchand the first French athlete to take four individual golds, as opposed to team ones, at a single Summer Games and only the third male swimmer to do so after US’ Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz.
After touching the wall to deafening cheers, Marchand held up four fingers as French President Emmanuel Macron raised his arms and punched the air from the terraces.
‘FRENCH MICHAEL PHELPS’
France’s first swimmer to win a medley gold, Marchand triumphed nearly 30 years after his father Xavier became the first Frenchman to reach an Olympic final at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
He won the 400 individual medley on Sunday last week and then both the 200 butterfly and 200 breaststroke within two incredible hours on Wednesday.
Just as he had done three times before, the 22-year-old from Toulouse mounted the podium and belted out the Marseillaise with the entire stadium accompanying him.
“Leon’s name’s now in the national anthem it seems, which is pretty cool,” said Scott, who extended his British record haul to eight Olympic medals.
“As much as what Phelps did was pretty sensational, he never did it in his home country and so he’s becoming a sort of global superstar now. He kind of runs France now,” he said.
The great expectations might have been too much for other swimmers at their home Games, but Marchand only drew energy from them as he lived up to his nickname the “French Michael Phelps.”
Coached by Bob Bowman, the man who helped Phelps to greatness, Marchand was asked if he was comfortable with comparisons with the American great and replied: “He’s a legend of the swimming world and he will always be.”
“I met Michael last year. He was an amazing guy to me,” he added. “He gave me a lot of advice... I don’t know. It’s just crazy to be compared to those guys.”
It was certainly a Phelps-like performance in the 200 individual medley final.
Marchand took control from the second backstroke leg, stretched his lead through the breaststroke as French fans grunted in unison, then powered home in the freestyle to give the world record a shake.
At 22, the future is bright for the face of the Paris Games.
“It’s not over for me,” said Marchand. “This is just the beginning. I’m really excited. My next goal is the LA ‘28.”
Inter’s defense of their Italian Serie A title was hit with a setback on Sunday as they lost 1-0 at home to AS Roma, while Scott McTominay netted a brace as SSC Napoli beat Torino 2-0 to go top of the table. No fixtures were played on Friday or Saturday because of the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome, meaning the full round of Serie A matches took place on Sunday and yesterday. Matias Soule’s first-half strike for Roma knocked Inter off top spot earlier in the day before new Napoli opened up a three-point buffer with victory in Sunday’s
Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa yesterday set a women’s only world record of 2 hours, 15 minutes, 50 seconds as she won the London Marathon, while Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe put a star-studded men’s field to the sword. For 28-year-old Assefa it was ample compensation for finishing runner-up in London and the Paris Olympics last year — especially as bitter Dutch rival, the Ethiopia-born Sifan Hassan, finished third. Assefa dropped Kenya’s Joyciline Jepkosgei as the race, played out in blazing sunshine and with thousands lining the route, entered its business end. She came home almost three minutes clear of the Kenyan. Hassan, who beat her in
FOCUS: ‘We came out here with a goal in mind ... to keep our foot on their throat and on their neck, and continue to play 48 minutes of basketball,’ Donovan Mitchell said The Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday thrashed the Miami Heat to cruise into the next round of the NBA playoffs as the Golden State Warriors battled past the Houston Rockets 109-106 to move to the brink of a series victory. After pounding Miami 124-87 in game three on Saturday, No.1 Eastern Conference seeds Cleveland once again piled on the misery for their outclassed opponents with a crushing 138-83 victory to complete a 4-0 series win. The 55-point drubbing was the largest series-clinching victory in NBA playoff history and sets up a series against either the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks in
Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds said it felt like an “impossible dream” when fellow Hollywood A-lister Rob McElhenney first floated the idea of buying soccer club Wrexham, along with a pitch for a documentary. The ultimate goal was reaching the Premier League. Four years after they purchased the north Wales outfit, Wrexham are one league away from achieving their lofty goal after a 3-0 win over Charlton Athletic on Saturday saw them promoted for a record third consecutive time. “We were standing there doing a press conference four years ago, and said our goal is to make it to the Premier League, and
RSS