The hero of the Paris Olympic Games, Léon Marchand, completed his recovery competition with a defeat over 200 m 4 swimming in Fort Lauderdale (Florida, United States), Saturday May 3. The quadruple Olympic champion in Paris was overflowed, during the last 50 m swarm in crawl, by the American Shaine Casas (1 min 56 s 52), his training partner.
The 22 -year -old Frenchman made his return to competition during the Floridian swim series this week, where he embarked on the 400m free swimming challenge, and was able to measure his current form. After her 3e Place at the 400 m freestyle Thursday, merchant suffered on 200 m freestyle on Friday (8e from the final), and was beaten by Bobby Finke on 400 m swimming, his favorite distance.
On Saturday, he decided to withdraw the 200m breaststroke from his program to focus on the 200 m swimming, where he shone during the flows and the breaststroke, before weigning at the end of the race on the crawl.
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Marchand is back in Austin (Texas) with the ex-eleor of Michael Phelps, Bob Bowman, after spending three months at the start of the year in Australia with the famous coach Dean Boxall. Touched on a shoulder at the end of December 2024, he underwent a fracture of fatigue at a coast in Australia.
“Test things”
“He wants to do different things, he had fun, he didn’t get so badly”commented Bowman in the mixed zone on Friday, about the tests of merchant in crawl in particular. “The 400? It was ok, he gave himself well and the times are pretty good, despite huge technical errors that must be corrected. His turns were horrible. He is not yet competitive at the highest level but it is good for him to test things. »»
The Frenchman was one of the big names of swimming engaged in the Floridian competition, disputed from Wednesday to Saturday, where two world records fell on Saturday. The American star Katie Ledecky, Nonuple Olympic champion, improved her world record for the 800m freestyle, swimming in 8 min 04 s 12, against 8 min 04 s 79 at the Rio Games in 2016.
As for her compatriot Gretchen Walsh, she has repeatedly improved her world butterfly world record. In the morning, the Olympic vice-champion swam in 55 min 09 s in series, before largely beating this time in the afternoon in the final in 54 min 60 s, in front of the Olympic champion, Torri Huske.
