By Nanterre, France
CNN
—
There are moments in sports when you can feel an athlete becoming a legend before your very eyes. Wednesday was one of those nights.
La Défense Arena just outside of Paris was full of French tricolore flags and anticipation as home nation fans waited for Léon. And Frenchman Léon Marchand might have earned that one-name status in France after doing something that hadn’t been done in almost 50 years – winning two individual swimming gold medals in the same night, setting two Olympic records in the process.
The noise inside the arena was just incredible. Once Marchand’s first race was announced on the big screen, the chants began: “Lé-on! Lé-on! Lé-on! Lé-on!” When he appered on the pool deck, a roar went up and then more chants: “Lé-on! Lé-on! Lé-on! Lé-on!” The buzzer went off and an almighty cheer went up from the crowd. The chant of Marchand’s first name began again.
Marchand began his first race, the 200-meter butterfly, trailing. Hungarian Kristóf Milák looked ready to play spoiler on the Frenchman’s big night, setting the pace and looking strong for the first three-quarters of the contest.
And then Marchand kicked off the pool wall into the final 50 meters of the race and the arena suddenly sounded like the inside of a jet engine.
The Frenchman surged past Milák while still underwater and when he surfaced, the crowd noticed his lead. The roar in the arena – already noted by many swimmers as incredibly loud and one of the most raucous of these Paris Games – turned deafening as Marchand carried the edge into the final meters.
When he hit the wall first, that unbelievable level of noise somehow went up another level. It’s a miracle the roof is still on this beautiful arena in Nanterre.
“I could hear the whole pool going crazy. I think that’s why I was able to win that race. I really used that energy from the crowd,” Marchand said after.
A few semifinal heats allowed the crowd to catch its breath somewhat before their hero again walked out for a rousing edition of “La Marseillaise.” The song, a rollicking cry of resistance to France’s enemies in the late 1700s as the royals of Europe attempted to crush the French Revolution, was sung from the belly by every French fan in the crowd.
And as he took a victory lap, the chant began again: “Lé-on! Lé-on! Lé-on!”
After all that, Marchand somehow still had to swim again.
One might think that after all those emotions, after all those “Lé-on!”s, Marchand might be experiencing an adrenaline dump that would be hard to surpass. And maybe he did – he benefitted from another long break for more preliminary heats and medal ceremonies.
But once the pool deck cleared after the final preliminary heat in the women’s 200-meter breaststroke, the chant went up again before any swimmers had entered: “Lé-on! Lé-on! Lé-on! Lé-on!”
Marchand took a few very deep breaths as he was introduced, waving to his crowd. Another roar greeted the buzzer to start the race.
This time, Marchand did not need to make a comeback.
Shouts of “Allez!” went up every time the Frenchman surfaced; a raucous repetition that grew louder as Marchand seemed to grow ever stronger. There was no doubt in this one.
“Every time I took a breath, I could hear the huge noise for me. It’s pretty cool,” he said.
When Marchand touched the wall first, setting yet another Olympic record and finishing almost a second before silver medalist Zac Stubblety-Cook (whose Olympic record from Tokyo was broken), the jet engine revved up again.
The French crowd roared. Even if they didn’t know what they had just witnessed was a piece of Games history, they knew they had just seen an Olympic star become a French legend.
“I think it will take a while for me to realize,” Marchand told reporters after the race when he was asked about the experience. “It will take a while for me to realize the first day too. So, I’m just going to keep going.
“I have the [200 individual medley] tomorrow, so I’ll just focus on that for now. I really enjoyed every moment of those two finals. It was really amazing for me to swim in those, it was really good opponents too. That [200-meter butterfly race] was crazy for me.”
His coach Bob Bowman, the same man who coached Michael Phelps to legendary status, said the scenes in Nanterre were simply amazing.
“It’s a night he’ll never forget,” Bowman said. “Hope he just remembers everything about it.”
But Bowman also knows the downside of this moment. He told reporters he thinks Marchand can still improve – and has to survive success.
“The key thing for him, which sadly I know about – he doesn’t know about it yet – is he’s got to survive the success, right?” Bowman said. “He’s got to come out of what’s next. And he has no idea, but I know exactly what’s next. And then somehow, he has to find his way back to a pool in Austin, Texas, and start going up and down it.”
Surely, Marchand will find a way to survive his Paris performances. That’s the thing about legends: they always find a way to make even more history and become even greater.
