After nine months in the United States under the leadership of Bob Bowman, the former mentor of Michael Phelps, Léon Marchand is back in France to compete in the national championships in Rennes (June 11 to 16), qualifying for the Worlds in Japan ( July 23-30 in Fukuoka). The Toulousain will be the attraction of the swimming pool of Bréquigny (district of Rennes), after a perfect university season where he did not lose a single one of his 26 individual races under the colors of Arizona State. Already double world champion in the long pool in 2022 in the 400m medley and 200m medley, the 21-year-old swimmer panics the counters one year before the Olympic Games (OG) in Paris. Relaxed and with a hint of an American accent, he evokes Monde his new status.
In March, you won three individual titles and broke as many records in the finals of the American University Championships (NCAA) in the 25-yard (22.86 m) pool. Where did you surprise yourself the most?
I knew I could chain a lot of races. On the other hand, from the first day, on the 4 × 200 yard freestyle relay, I started last and I made the best time in history (1 min 28 s 42). On this race, I felt myself flying, it was the first time that I felt that I could push my castings to the limit each time, without tiring.
The 400m medley was the biggest surprise for me, I didn’t expect to swim so fast [3 min 28 s 82, premier homme à casser les 3 min 30 s] and improve my time by three seconds!
The medley was obvious, or did you come there by chance?
I started quite late, during a long course competition, in Toulouse, in 2017, we thought we were going to try, but at the beginning, it was terrible… [rires] The difficulty is to relaunch after the butterfly, then after the backstroke and finally after the breaststroke, with completely different supports. But I liked it because in training, I did a bit of everything. Before, I was a flutter, and when you spend ten training sessions a week doing just that, it’s a bit boring.
The medley also allowed me to progress everywhere because I was not good in backstroke, breaststroke or crawl… And I saw my times drop very quickly, it’s easier to improve on a 400 m medley than on a 50 m crawl, for example. In the 400m medley, there are a lot of things that come into play: the start, each turn, each lap, each resumption of swimming, etc.
Of the 4 strokes, which one resisted you the most at the start?
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