Soon enough they will be playing rugby again at the Arena in La Défense. It’s a kit stadium and after the Paralympics finishes, the two Olympic pools inside it will be drained, packed away and put up again in their new, permanent locations. The scaffolding grandstand will be taken down, the pitch laid down and the posts reinstalled ready for Racing 92’s next home game. Maybe by the time their new signing Owen Farrell is standing ready for the kick-off, the crowd’s great shout of “Allez!” every time Léon Marchand breasted the water this past week will have finally finished echoing around the rafters.
At the start of the Games, the 22-year-old was a richly gifted kid, burdened with an almost unfathomable weight of expectation. France does not have a bona fide star to light up the athletics at the Stade de France, which means Marchand, who won his first world championship title in 2022, came as the biggest hope the host nation had in the two main Olympic sports.
