Olympics 2024: Léon Marchand, the French face of the Games, was made in America

PARIS — The blond-haired, blue-eyed, boyish face of the 2024 Olympics prepped for Parisian spotlights in Tempe, Arizona, or hopping across the American Southwest, hiding in plain sight.

Nowadays, Léon Marchand towers over the City of Light. His likeness beams off a 700-foot-tall building. His name leads Olympic ticket promos ahead of Simone Biles and Noah Lyles. His photo roars off newspapers and posters in his native France.

But over the past three years, he grew from boy to man in relative anonymity, amid a sea of 50,000 college students, his 6-foot-2, 170-pound frame indistinguishable from many others.

He bounced from dorm to dining hall to classes at Arizona State University. When he wasn’t at a sun-drenched pool, he’d play “Call of Duty” and study computer science. His sharp cheeks, curly mane and skinny build blended in, so much so that strangers rarely recognized him. “We’re undercover,” his teammate Hubert Kos said.

Until, that is, Marchand dips into chlorinated water and explodes.

He also spent the past three years obliterating vaunted records, boggling swimming minds, and kindling Marchand Mania back home.

He arrived in Arizona already an Olympian. It was in Tempe where he became “the new monster.” He chased down Michael Phelps’ last and longest-held record in his signature event, the 400-meter individual medley, en route to three world championships last summer.

Marchand then set and re-set NCAA marks. In March, he led ASU to its first national title. He swelled with pride that week in Indianapolis. He brimmed with joy surrounded by teammates who, 5,000 miles outside spotlights, in modest apartments and off-campus homes, had “brought him out of his shell” and become his best friends.

He also got a glimpse that week of the hoopla awaiting him in Paris. Nearly a dozen French reporters, one from every major media outlet, had flown to Indy for NCAAs. On opening night, they scrambled through a claustrophobic natatorium simply to film his entrance — trotting, hands in pockets, down a nondescript flight of stairs.

Later, they readied their microphones, which caught other swimmers off guard. When Florida’s Josh Liendo settled in for a news conference minutes before Marchand, his eyes bulged. “I feel like I’m LeBron,” he said to laughter.

Moments after that, Marchand entered, and cameras rolled — but he seemed unmoved, unperturbed. Because he knew the mania would soon multiply, especially if he does what he’s expected to do at La Défense Arena in a western Paris suburb starting Sunday.

Marchand, 22, enters the Games as a multi-gold-medal favorite. If all goes to plan, he’ll sweep the IMs, beginning with the 400 this weekend. He’ll contend for two more medals, in the 200-meter butterfly and breaststroke, 90 minutes apart on Wednesday. He’ll step onto podiums, and hear "La Marseillaise,” and feel France’s adoration.

But no, he won’t be leaning into spotlights.

And no, the mild-mannered kid from Toulouse hasn’t visualized any of this.

He doesn’t even have a fairytale to tell about how the 2017 announcement that Paris would host these Olympics sparked big dreams.

“Not really,” Marchand said earlier this year. “Because at the time, I was not really good at swimming.”

Making a champion

He was born into a family of French swimming royalty — to a father, Xavier Marchand, and mother, Céline Bonnet, who were both Olympians — but in his early years, Léon Marchand didn’t exactly cannonball into the sport.

He tip-toed in, and shivered. He was cold. He was bored. So he quit.

He also dabbled in rugby and judo as a child. His parents never pushed him toward the pool. But after roughly two years away, he found his way back to Dauphins du TOEC, the swim club where his dad once trained. And he made friends with the water.

He was not, however, a 12-year-old prodigy like Michael Phelps was. He was “tiny,” he remembers, and “I was not really a racer. I didn't want, really, to win. I was just swimming — every day, a little bit, to have fun.”

He began to get serious when he began to grow. As a teen with precocious technique, he committed to the sport. At 17, he won a French championship in the 200-meter butterfly; he set a national record in the 400 IM; and he decided to leave home.

College competition, academics and community pulled him across the Atlantic.

Cal was his top choice — but told him “quite late” in the process that it couldn’t offer him a full scholarship.

So, one evening in the spring of 2020, Marchand sent a flurry of emails to other college coaches, essentially asking: Can I swim for you? Bob Bowman — Phelps’ longtime coach and mentor, who was five years into a transformative stint at Arizona State — had never heard of Léon, but recognized the Marchand name. So he looked up the kid’s times. Bowman emailed back almost immediately: We’re very interested.

Marchand barely slept that night. Over the coming weeks, homebound by the COVID-19 pandemic, he spoke with Bowman and others via FaceTime and Zoom. He deliberated over several schools. He saw “magnificent” facilities and strong training groups everywhere. “What tipped the scales,” he said in 2022, “was the coach.”

He chose ASU and Bowman, both for Bowman’s experience and their human connection. He stayed in France to train for the Tokyo Olympics — where he finished sixth in the 400 IM at age 19 — then enrolled at Arizona State in the fall of 2021, and got to work.

He and Bowman have worked and worked and worked ever since, refining Marchand’s strokes and chiseling his body. Marchand maintained a relationship with his hometown coach, Nicolas Castel, but it was Bowman who’d scurry around a Tempe pool deck every day, at 6 a.m. and again in the afternoon, guiding and encouraging his latest protégé.

The days, of course, could be draining. When Marchand was in earlier stages of learning English as a freshman, his brain would shut off at 5 p.m. Even as a junior, with an intentionally lighter Olympic-year courseload, he hardly had time to relax — and when he got some, “​​I can't really do anything, because I'm really tired all the time, because of Coach Bowman,” he said with a chuckle. He’d kick back and watch Peaky Blinders, or listen to some music, or sleep.

The work, though, has paid off. As a rising sophomore in 2022, Marchand won the 200 and 400 IMs at worlds, and established himself as the planet’s best male swimmer. He seemed blown away by his own meteoric rise — “everything just happened so quickly,” he said that summer. Then, he kept accelerating.

He was already something of a star when he landed in Fukuoka, Japan, last July for worlds. Fans swarmed to him, his parents and his hype-man-in-chief, Oscar, his younger brother. It was the 400 IM, however, that took their breath away. Phelps was calling the race live on Peacock, and “uh-oh,” he said as Marchand turned for the freestyle leg. “It’s gone,” Phelps said of the world record he’d held since 2002, when Marchand was 2 months old; and the 4:03.84 that had stood, untouched, since Beijing 2008. (Phelps chopped down his own record seven times; nobody broke it for 15 years thereafter.)

A minute later, after touching the wall in Fukuoka, Marchand looked up, saw 4:02.50, and exclaimed to himself: “What the f*** is happening?” Thousands roared. Phelps applauded, then crowned him with a gold medal.

A few weeks later, Marchand returned to Tempe, and to relative anonymity.

Managing Marchandmania

The anonymity available at America’s largest college, or really anywhere in the States, was all part of the Marchands’ plan. "We could see that he was on the rise, people were talking about 'the little prodigy,’ 'the future star' and so on,” Xavier said. “Getting away from it was one of the solutions." It could’ve overwhelmed an introverted teen. “I definitely think being away from France really helped him,” Bowman says.

The move, instead, fed comparisons to Phelps — who had followed Bowman to Arizona and remained close to his mentor in retirement. Marchand had to clarify: “I want to create my own path.” The similarities, however, were irresistible. Both were “aerobic animals,” Bowman acknowledged. Both are masters of the medley. Both have done things in practice that peers and coaches can’t believe.

But they are different, and Bowman understood this. He could bark at and challenge Phelps. His approach to Marchand, on the other hand, is “gentle — like, I would never raise my voice at him, or anything like that,” Bowman says. “He's sensitive; he wants to do well; so you don't have to motivate him. … I'm just guiding him. And he responds very well to that. He doesn't need to be driven anywhere. He knows where he wants to go.”

Marchand, Bowman says, is “a dream” to coach. He’s also “quiet,” meek and polite. “He's, like, salt of the earth, one of the best human beings you'll ever meet,” ASU freestyler Jack Dolan said. “Not even a shred of an ego about the kid.” Some teammates were awestruck upon arrival at Arizona State; but Marchand’s humility would disarm them.

And they, in turn, helped an introvert find his voice. “I've never been really social,” Marchand said. “But since I came here three years ago, I think it really changed a lot.”

He came to enjoy and cherish the camaraderie of swimming. He also came to understand that teammates “are watching me.” He realized he could impact them; lead them. “They learn from me, and I love giving advice, helping them all, every day,” Marchand said.

They were the reason he didn’t go pro in 2023. “I thought he would,” Bowman says. “But he ultimately decided that he wanted to stay and help the team try to win a team championship.”

He did exactly that in March. He recovered from a deflating sickness in the fall to lower multiple NCAA records and hoist a trophy. It was, he said, the most fun he’d ever had in the sport. “I don't think I've ever experienced anything so intense,” he said that night, in French. “And above all, sharing it with all my friends was huge.”

Less than 48 hours later, Bowman left ASU for Texas. His swimmers scrambled. Marchand, Bowman admits, was “stressed out.”

By May, though, he was back in his element. In France, Marchand Mania was ramping up; but at a 24-day altitude camp in Colorado, Bowman said, “we're pretty secluded from everything.”

Marchand, who did turn pro this spring, has gotten tastes of the craziness. Acclimating to it, in a way, has been a critical aspect of Olympic prep. He has felt it at French national championships. “What’s hard is that I'm never alone anymore. There's always someone taking my picture or filming me,” he said last June. “I've got to get used to it, because it will be even worse in Paris."

Part of the plan, though, is to avoid it. Bowman acts as a shield, filtering media requests. Xavier and a family-friend lawyer manage sponsor interest in France. “We try to protect him,” Xavier said.

Léon (pronounced LAY-on) also protects himself. Since 2020, he has worked with a “mental trainer,” Thomas Sammu. They initially focused on “managing my stress, and how nervous I was before meets,” Marchand said. They have since worked on mental maintenance, and energy moderation, in anticipation of a grueling, adrenaline-inducing, nine-day meet like the Olympics. One of the biggest challenges, swimmers often say, is simply falling asleep hours after a race, to rest up for the next one. Marchand has developed a strategy — a couple minutes of nose-only breathing — to do just that.

At times, he also meditates. Before his Paris 2024 debut on Sunday, he’ll turn to a “dynamic breathing” technique to relax his muscles and his mind. He’ll close his eyes. He’ll think about his stroke. He’ll zero in on “some words that make me feel better.”

The goal, he said, is to “focus on myself, and not everything else.”

Because the ultimate goal — “I want to win,” he said, “I want to be an Olympic champion” — is now within reach.

Even the reigning Olympic champion in the 400 IM, Chase Kalisz, sounds confident in Marchand’s ability to block out noise and reach for it.

“Léon’s phenomenal,” Kalisz said last month. “He's got all the pressure in the world on him. But, you know, nothing's really affected him so far.”