PARIS — It was 11:32 p.m., the end of a day unlike any Olympic swimming has ever seen. The man who had just performed the greatest single-session feat in the history of his sport was standing at an elevator, waiting for it to open and take him down and away from a venue he’d transformed into a roaring SEC football stadium.
Léon Marchand, an unremarkable physical specimen dressed in his white French podium sweats, was beginning the refueling process by munching on a snack and sipping on a bottle of water. Someone had painted a thin streak of France’s flag colors—red, white and blue—on his left cheek. With the elevator taking its sweet time, a staffer at La Défense Arena seized the opportunity to ask Marchand for a selfie, which he granted with a smile.
