Marchand Mania Will Not Subside: Frenchman Issues First Reminders of 2025
For a brief stretch, Leon Marchand needed a break from his record-smashing ways. For three years, he was the undisputed star of the sport from March through the summer, with record-breaking performances at the NCAA Championships giving way to a plethora of gold medals on the international level. The peaked with his historic four-gold-medal sweep at the Paris Olympics in front of an adoring home crowd.
In the months following the Games, Marchand tried to pick up where he left off in the only course in which he had yet to stamp his authority, short course meters. A run on the World Cup circuit culminated with a world record in the 200 IM, but Marchand had to stop there. He pulled out of the Short Course World Championships, citing exhaustion. “It’s time for me to step back, train hard and start preparing (for) future challenges. I know you will understand and I’m excited for what’s ahead,” he wrote on Instagram.
Still, this was not a complete break from swimming. Marchand continued training in France before a stop in Australia and then finally reuniting with coach Bob Bowman at the University of Texas. He joined the group riding high following a title-winning performance at the NCAA Championships, one in which fellow gold medalist Hubert Kos achieved a performance reminiscent of his French training partner. Marchand won don the Longhorn cap for the first time in May as he set out to expand his palate in the new quadrennium.
His first long course competition since the Olympics came at the Fort Lauderdale Pro Series and included multiple appearances in freestyle events. Marchand swam best times and reached finals but could not pose serious challenges to the top Americans in the events. Moreover, he was unusually vulnerable in individual medley racing. Bobby Finke used his signature closing burst to nip Marchand in the 400 IM while new training partner Shaine Casas nearly matched Marchand on the breaststroke leg as he pulled an upset in the 200 IM.
But it would not take long for Marchand to remind the world of his ridiculous capabilities, two weeks to be exact. 2025 as a rebuilding year? Hardly, not if he’s already blasting times of 4:07.11 in the 400 IM and 2:08.25 in the 200 breaststroke. Those times secured his spots at this year’s World Championships, with Marchand given a deserved pass from his usual national selection competition on the heels of the Olympics.
He did not race the 200 IM or 200 butterfly over the weekend at the Longhorn Elite Invite, but rest assured that Marchand will be ready to pursue world titles in those events in two months in Singapore — unless, of course, he decides to adjust his World Championships event lineup in the post-Olympic year, a strategy Bowman once employed with Michael Phelps.
Considering the big picture of his career, Marchand had absolutely nothing to prove this month or even this year, not after his Olympics performance. He joined Phelps and Mark Spitz as the only men to sweep four individual gold medals on the sport’s grandest stage, and he did it with a flair for the dramatic. That was particularly true with his 200 fly-200 breast double on night five of competition, with a comeback win over world-record holder Kristof Milak in the butterfly before a wire-to-wire domination of defending champion Zac Stubblety-Cook in the breaststroke.
He might not win every single race, especially with so many midseason checkpoints along the way during the four-year stretch between Olympic Games. We saw that recently in Fort Lauderdale. Will the experiment with freestyle culminate with extra events to add to his lineup for international contention? We’ll see, but it’s hard to envision his long course freestyle reaching the level of his short course success at his final collegiate meet.
But after Paris, no moment will ever be too big for Marchand. That’s why no one should expect to beat him in one of his main events at a championship-level competition, even if the statistics suggest otherwise.