“Allez!” they cried each time Léon Marchand’s head bobbed out of the water. “Allez!” they urged, as the man who will end up as France’s biggest star at this Olympics powered towards 400m individual medley gold. And each “Allez!” came with such a ferocity and force it seemed to make the temporary foundations around this pool tremble in excitement.
This was not a race, but an obliteration. The 22-year-old Marchand is trained by Michael Phelps’s old coach, Bob Bowman, and there were echoes of the American great as he took victory by an astonishing 5.67sec. For good measure his time of 4min 2.95sec also broke the longest standing Olympic swimming record, set by Phelps in 2008.
