Under the tutelage of Bob Bowman, the French swimmer is poised to become the face of the Paris Olympics.
Leon Marchand of France celebrates after winning the 200-meter individual medley at last year's world championships in Fukuoka, Japan.
Like his father, Leon Marchand would find his way to America. In 2021, at 19, he would reach out to Bowman — Phelps’s former coach — via email and soon join Bowman’s nascent Arizona State program, winning 10 NCAA titles before he was done.A year later after arriving in the United States, Marchand would become a world champion in his father’s best event, the 200 IM, and claim a second gold in the longer version, the 400 IM.
Asked whether he recalled racing against Phelps all those years ago, he could summon no specific memories of his sixth-place finish in Auburn in 2004, which is believed to be the only time they raced each other in a 50-meter, Olympic-size pool.“At the time,” Xavier Marchand said, “I didn’t imagine — and I don’t think many people did — that he would become the greatest champion in history.”
Bowman wasn’t trying to create a chlorine-fueled clone of Phelps, knowing better than most that the latter’s combination of physiology, versatility and capacity for high-intensity, 10-times-a-week training probably would never be seen again. Their skill sets were different — Phelps was more of a freestyle/butterfly sprinter by nature, while Marchand’s best individual stroke is probably breaststroke — but their talents merged in the IM.
“I’m very good at saying no,” Bowman said. Of Marchand’s upcoming circus debut, Bowman said: “He has an idea . But until you live through it, you don’t really have an idea.”
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