It was aggressive. It was audacious. It was unprecedented. It was the kind of thing only a 22-year-old kid with preternatural talent and a willingness to chase a singular type of greatness would even try. In a sense, it was madness. And in the end, it was spectacular.
Anyone who witnessed Marchand’s historic 200-meter butterfly/200-meter breaststroke at the Paris Olympics will be left with one final sound ringing in their heads, for the rest of this night if not an eternity: the deafening, rhythmic, sing-shouted chant that accompanied each bob of his head as he took it home in the breaststroke — “Allez! Allez! Allez!”
When it was over, his eighth and final length of the pool, Marchand, the new prince of France, sat on the lane line as if he had conquered the world — which he had, in a sense. He slapped the water in triumph, fell back into the adjacent lane, pulled himself out of the pool, looked around in satisfied triumph and thrust both arms in the air.
“It will take a while for me to realize” the magnitude of the moment, Marchand said. Asked at what point he began to believe this was possible, he said, “I knew it was possible to finish those races, maybe not win them.”
The barest facts don’t do justice to the immenseness of Marchand’s night, but here they are: He won the 200 fly in 1 minute 51.21 seconds, then won the 200 breast in 2:05.85, both of them Olympic records. The victories give him three gold medals in these Olympics — the other came Sunday night in the 400-meter individual medley — with one more individual event to go. He will return to Paris La Défense Arena on Thursday morning for the preliminary heats of the 200 IM, the final for which is Friday night.
But the further you zoom out from the granular details, the more astounding it becomes. Not only had no swimmer in history won those two events at the same Olympics — no swimmer had even won butterfly and breaststroke races of any length in the same Olympics. Of the few who have even attempted it, American Mary Sears came closest, earning bronze in the 100 fly and finishing seventh in the 200 breast in 1956.
Zoom out further. No swimmer in the past 48 years had won two individual Olympic gold medals on the same night. Not Michael Phelps, who pulled off many individual/relay doubles but never double golds in individual events. Not Ryan Lochte, who twice earned two medals in individual events on the same night (2008, 2012) but never two golds.
The last to do it was East Germany’s Kornelia Ender, who won the 200 free and 100 fly on July 22, 1976, in Montreal. (Although it was later revealed that East German officials had systematically administered steroids to their swimmers — including Ender, who has maintained she did not know what she was being given — their records have been allowed to stand.)
Here’s how long it had been since a male swimmer won two individual Olympic golds on the same day: That swimmer, Australia’s Frederick Lane, according to Olympedia.org, swam his races in the Seine, and the second of them was a race — the 200-meter obstacle course, in which swimmers were made to go over and under various poles and boats — that never made another appearance on the Olympic program. The year was 1900.
The original Olympic swimming schedule for Paris 2024 had the 200 breast and the 200 fly as back-to-back events — which organizers believed to be logical because no one had ever heard of someone swimming both of those disparate events at the same international meet.
But as Marchand and his coach, Bob Bowman, began zeroing in on that precise double, they realized they had a problem with the timing. So the French swimming federation lobbied the sport’s international governing body, World Aquatics, for a schedule change, and it was granted — resulting in the placement of those two events at the opposite ends of Wednesday night’s program.
Up until a few days ago, Bowman was not even sure he wanted Marchand to attempt such a grueling and head-spinning double, figuring it might be more prudent to scratch one of them — probably the fly — in the name of optimizing Marchand’s chances in the other.
“But he was pretty confident,” said Bowman, who also coached Phelps to his record 23 Olympic golds. “He knew more than me.”
Still, to pull off the historic feat would require swimming’s version of the triple-double: Marchand would have to swim the fly/breast double at three different sessions in the span of about 32 hours — in morning prelims Tuesday, in semifinals Tuesday night and again in the finals Wednesday night.
“I’ve done way more difficult [doubles] in NCAAs,” said Marchand, who swam collegiately at Arizona State and frequently swam individual breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle events, sometimes on the same day.
His confidence seemed to grow with each swim here. And on Wednesday night, when Marchand came from behind on the final 50 meters to take down Hungarian star Kristof Milak in the 200 fly, he punctuated it with a raised index finger: one down, one to go.
Marchand had trailed Milak by more than half a second at the halfway point of the fly, but he unleashed a furious turn and underwater kick at the 150-meter wall and caught his rival down the stretch to claim his second gold — as well as move past Phelps into the No. 2 position all-time, behind only Milak. Ilya Kharun took bronze in 1:52.80, earning Canada its first Olympic medal by a male swimmer since 2012.
“I could hear the whole pool going crazy,” Marchand said of the final 50. “I think that’s why I was able to win: I really used that energy from the crowd.”
From the time Marchand pulled himself out of the pool at the end of the fly to the time he was back on the starting blocks for the final of the breaststroke was roughly 1 hour 50 minutes, during which time he would try to rehydrate, reduce the lactic acid in his system through deep breathing and keep his muscles loose through gentle stretching exercises.
Oh, right — he also had to appear on the top step of the medal stand, which he did to roaring applause, and lead the stadium in another stirring, full-throated rendition of “La Marseillaise.” He did, however, skip the victory lap around the stadium afterward, choosing to duck out through a side door and return to his race-recovery program.
In the breaststroke, he never trailed, beating defending champ Zac Stubblety-Cook of Australia by almost a full second and bronze medalist Caspar Corbeau of the Netherlands by more than two. The whole nearly two-minute affair was accompanied by the rhythmic “Allez!” chant, which even the swimmers whose heads were beneath the surface could feel pulsing through their swim caps.
“It didn’t feel like a swim meet,” Stubblety-Cook said. “It felt like a rugby match.”
Marchand — born in Toulouse, developed in Tempe, crowned in Paris — now has stamped himself as the most fascinating swimmer of his generation, if not the most flat-out talented. He has really been an international force for just two years, but already it is clear there is no one else like him.
And maybe there has never been anyone like him, with his unique set of skills and strokes and substance. It would appear there is almost nothing in the sport he can’t do, though until proved otherwise, one must assume the 200-meter obstacle course would give him a world of trouble.
