You can’t miss Léon Marchand in Paris, his picture runs right up along all 200m of the only skyscraper in the city limits, the Tour Montparnasse. Marchand is 22 and has never won an Olympic medal, but he is one of the three French faces of the Games, along with Antoine Dupont and Victor Wembanyana. It means that for the first time since Michael Phelps set himself the impossible job of winning eight gold medals at Beijing in 2008, a swimmer is the star turn at the Olympics. It’s no coincidence that last year Marchand finally beat Phelps’ last surviving solo world record, in the 400m individual medley.
Marchand goes in four separate solo events in seven days, the 200m butterfly and 200m breaststroke, with the finals just an hour and a half apart on Wednesday evening, the 200m later in the week and the 400m medley, which is the first event up, on Sunday evening. That night he will share the top of the bill with Adam Peaty, who is trying to become the second man, after Phelps, to win the same event at three consecutive Games. There was a time Peaty was the nearest thing to a sure thing in sport, but he has had a rough three years since Tokyo, and, while he has set the fastest time in the world this year, he is still searching for his very best form.
