Olympic champion Leon Marchand to focus on medleys at World Aquatics C’ships in Singapore

PARIS – French swimmer Leon Marchand has a clear objective for his World Aquatics Championships campaign in Singapore next week.

In a bid to break the 200m medley world record, the 23-year-old will be skipping two of the four events which he won at the 2024 Olympics, his club president in Toulouse announced on July 21.

Marchand was one of the standout stars of the Paris Games where he claimed gold in the 200m breaststroke and 200m butterfly, as well the 200m and 400m individual medleys.

However, he is now set to focus purely on the medley events.

“He won’t be doing the 200m butterfly and 200m breaststroke,” Michel Coloma of the Dauphins du TOEC club told AFP.

“He wants to see what happens in the 200m medley, without having any other races on his plate.”

Nicolas Castel, Marchand’s coach at Dauphins, told Franceinfo Sport: “It’s a choice we made because we’re in a post-Olympic year, and he’s never had the opportunity to perform a 200m medley without having a race before or after the same day.

“He wanted to try this isolated 200m medley and see what he is capable of. Now, the main idea is to test this race without anything around it.”

Marchand is already the world record holder for the 400m medley, having snatched it from American legend Michael Phelps in 2023, but he now wants a crack at Ryan Lochte’s 2011 record of 1min 54.00sec for the 200m medley.

He came close in his Olympic final, which he won in 1:54.06, setting a Games record in the process.

In a warmup event ahead of the world meet, he clocked 1:57.23 to come home first at the Indy Summer Cup in Indianapolis on June 28, with Hungary’s Hubert Kos second in 2:00.16.

Marchand will begin his world championship campaign on July 30 when the 200m medley heats take place at the WCH Arena, with the final the next day.
REUTERS