Marchand wins his first Olympic gold medal in his career and the first by a Sun Devil since 2012.
PARIS – In front of his home country, Léon Marchand claimed Olympic gold with a record-breaking time of 4:02.95, beating out Matsushita Tomoyuki of Japan and Carson Foster of Team USA for his first gold medal of his Olympic career.
Marchand won by a dominant six seconds, breaking the Olympic record set by Michael Phelps (4:03.84) from the 2016 Rio Olympics.
At the 2023 World Aquatic Championships, Marchand captured the 400 IM world title by breaking the final world record from Michael Phelps, setting a time of 4:02.50. When speaking to NBC, Marchand was asked on how long he’s been dreaming of winning Olympic gold in front of his home country and how special it was.
“I think it’s a dream for every one of us, I got a chance to do it today. That was amazing I don’t know how to describe it. But that was a lot of pressure for me but also amazing.” said Léon Marchand. “It was really helpful for me to focus on myself today. I was trying to take that energy from all the people in the crowd and use it for the 400 IM which is what I did. The breaststroke was insane because I could hear the whole stadium so that was amazing to do today.”
The five-time World Aquatics Champion, 10-time NCAA Champion and 17-time Pac-12 champion now adds a gold medal to his already stacked resumé and has three more opportunities to add to his medal collection. The Frenchman will compete in the 200 IM, 200m butterfly and the 200m breaststroke later this week.
In the morning preliminary session, he swam the best time of the morning, finishing in 4:08.30, which was then the second-best time in the world in 2024 and bested out the competition by 1.21 seconds.
Marchand becomes the first Sun Devil to win an Olympic gold medal since James Harden (men’s basketball) and Amy LePeilbet (women’s soccer) at the 2012 London Olympics. In addition he’s the first ASU swimmer since Agnes Kovacs of Hungary to claim Olympic gold, who did so in the 2000 Olympic games in the 200m breaststroke.
While competing for the Sun Devils, he won back-to-back NCAA individual championships in the 400 IM, setting an NCAA record in 2023 with a time of 3:28.82 and in the 200 IM setting the NCAA Record with a time of 1:36.34.
Press Release courtesy of Sun Devil Athletics – Zach Wargo
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