Only three days after winning his first Olympic gold medal, Paris Games wunderkind Leon Marchand won two more golds on Wednesday (July 31). In an unprecedented feat, the 22-yer-old Frenchman won the 200-metre butterfly and the 200-metre breaststroke on the same night, both in Olympic record times.
He had already won the 400-metre individual medley on July 28.
After coming from behind to beat world-record holder and defending Olympic champion Kristóf Milák in the 200-metre butterfly, Marchand romped through the 200-metre breaststroke.
From @TheAthletic: The Frenchman Leon Marchand just accomplished something that no swimmer has done before: He won the 200m breaststroke and the 200m fly at the same Olympic Games. And he won them both on the same night. https://t.co/lFMtVjiQuG pic.twitter.com/2pMYOfwU2U
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 31, 2024
More than 15,000 fans—many of them holding up cardboard cutouts of his smiling face—nearly brought down the roof of La Defense Arena. “Léon! Léon! Léon!” they screamed.
Butterfly
Trailing most of the way in the butterfly, Marchand overtook Hungary’s Milák on the final lap. He finished with an Olympic record of 1:51.71, winning by four-hundredths of a second.
Canada’s Ilya Kharun won the bronze.
After the award ceremony, Marchand was back in the practice pool. There was another race to go.
Breaststroke
Marchand led all the way in the 200-metre breaststroke, touching out in two minutes 05.85 seconds.
Australia’s Zac Stubblety-Cook, the 2021 champion in Tokyo, had to be content with the silver while Caspar Corbeau of the Netherlands took the bronze.
“It was pretty crazy to have the chance to be in the final in both races,” said Marchand. “And then I just loved it, it was huge.
“I’ve fulfilled a lot of dreams since I’ve been here. Doing this double was also something I felt capable of, but to really do it in the real world is something else.”
“I’m so very proud of him,” said his coach, American Bob Bowman, who also coached the great Michael Phelps. “That’s a tremendous, historic effort.”
Even Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time who won 28 medals, had not performed a double like Marchand.