The clock on the giant screen of the L’Odyssée de Chartres swimming pool displays “7:50 p.m.”, Wednesday June 19. Léon Marchand has just completed four individual races in nine hours but in his favorite water line number 4, he continues the lengths again and again. At the edge of the pool deserted by spectators, around thirty young admirers do not take their eyes off him before applauding him as he leaves the water.
With a towel on his shoulder, the five-time world champion allows himself a small autograph session – carefully controlled – after his recovery. The Toulouse man can finally release the pressure, he has just succeeded in his bet at the French championships: winning two tickets for the Paris Olympic Games in the 200m butterfly and then the 200m breaststroke. He has already qualified for the 400m medley and hopes to do the same on Friday in the 200m medley. “200 pap’ – 200 breaststroke, it’s a pretty weird duo, I love everything weird, he says, laughing, in front of the journalists. Going for this kind of challenge gives me a lot of confidence for the future. »
For a year, the 22-year-old swimmer and his coaches, Bob Bowman and Nicolas Castel, have imagined a somewhat crazy challenge: to tick off the two events at the Olympics, whose heats and semi-finals are scheduled for the same day – and the finals the next day – about an hour apart. Even the legend Michael Phelps, aka “the most successful man and the most medals in the history of the Games” (28 including 23 gold), never risked doing two individual races in the same session of the daytime.
“Everything is perfectly timed”
Hoping to achieve such a double, “this requires a perfectly calibrated day, asks Denis Auguin, responsible for the succession of the French team. Everything is perfectly timed on each warm-up, each run, each recovery. It also requires a bit of human resources around him to make his task easier. »
It’s 10:13 a.m., Wednesday: Léon Marchand begins his marathon day by setting the best time in the 200m butterfly heats (1 min 57 s 90). Head to the outdoor pool of L’Odyssée for around twenty minutes of recovery, with lactate intake. The goal ? Measure your state of fatigue and optimize this crucial phase as best you can.
Exactly an hour later, the Toulouse native dived back for his 200m breaststroke series and managed his effort (2 min 12 sec 85) to qualify for the final. Three minutes after he came out of the water (the instruction came from Bowman), the FFN performance optimization department took another drop of blood from his ear. Then do it again during recovery. Verdict? “After twenty minutes, he found his basic values, as if he were at rest before his race, this validates his ability to reproduce efforts,” deciphers Robin Pla, the “Mr. data” of the FFN.
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