Katie Ledecky and Leon Marchard win swimming gold medals in Paris

OOne of the champions is unlikely to absorb adoration or display overwhelming emotion in the pool. The other one is all prim.

Both styles were on display Wednesday night at La Defense Arena in Nanterre, France, where Frenchman Leon Marchand and American Katie Ledecky added to their growing medal collections.

Marchand, 22, became the first swimmer in 48 years to win two individual gold medals on the same day. Marchard, who had already won gold, his first Olympic medal, on Sunday in the 400m individual medley, started the night by hitting Hungary’s Kristof Milak with a finishing shot in the 200m butterfly that sent the 17,000-strong crowd into overdrive. in a delirium that caused at least one person in the arena – OK, me – to cover their ears. It was the loudest indoor sporting event I have ever been to and I will never forget it.

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“I wasn’t ignoring it,” Marchand said of the yelling. “That’s why I was able to win that race. [I] It really tapped into that crowd energy.”

He got out of the pool with his chest stretched out and his arms on his waist. He couldn’t celebrate too much: Marchand, who studies at Arizona State University and trains with Micheal Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman in the United States, left the 200m butterfly victory ceremony early to prepare for the night’s next race , the 200 m breaststroke.

“I was able to enjoy it without losing too much energy,” Marchand said.

When, less than an hour later, Katie Ledecky splashed into the water with joy after setting a new Olympic record in the 1,500m freestyle, her signature race, the gesture may well have been the equivalent of spiking the soccer ball, pointing at a opponent, and doing a backflip into the end zone.

“I was really happy with the timing and the feeling,” the typically mild-mannered American superstar said on Wednesday. “I don’t intend to celebrate that much,” she said, unnecessarily.

Slap it, Katie. Someone with eight gold medals in swimming deserves to strut a little.

She is now the first swimmer to win Olympic titles at four different Games. With a total of 12 career Olympic medals, she is tied with three other Americans – Dara Torres, Natalie Coughlin and Jenny Thompson – for the most ever by a female swimmer. Today she also reiterated her plans to compete in Los Angeles in four years. She is still only 27 years old. Torres won Olympic silver medals at 41.

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Ledecky’s victory in the 1,500m freestyle is as close to a certainty as you’ll see at these Olympics: She held the 19 fastest times in the world in that race earlier in the evening and won the event in Tokyo when she made her Olympic debut. . Still, she struggled with the doubts that arose Wednesday. With her first three swims at the Paris Olympics – the 400m freestyle preliminaries and finals, where Ledecky won bronze on Saturday night, and the 1,500m preliminaries – “each one of them felt faster than the time,” she said. .

She couldn’t help but wonder if something was wrong.

Once the race began, though, she focused on her process, treating each 50m interval as its own race. This is how she operates in her training group, which includes American Olympians Bobby Finke and Kieran Smith in Florida. “We do a lot of 50s in practice, just holding time, keeping the stroke count,” Ledecky said. “That’s the energy I want to channel into this race. Just staying stuck in my 50s and hanging in there.” She says that on some training days her group will do 60 or 70 50m races in the water.

That work paid off. After the 400 m freestyle race, Ledecky got emotional talking about Finke and Smith. In Tokyo, Ledecky mentally said her grandmothers’ names to push her through the 1,500m. “Today I kind of decided on the names of the boys, the Florida boys that I train with every day,” she said. “I was kind of repeating their names in my head. Just thinking about all the training we did and all the confidence I get from training, being by their side and running with them.”

This feeling, in fact, is mutual. “Honestly, she really elevated my career, because of how much I learn from her,” Finke, who won gold in Tokyo, said in an interview before the Games. “She’s definitely helped me a lot when it comes to navigating the sport and dealing with everything.”

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With Ledecky’s work done and the victory ceremony complete – it was the first time the US national anthem had been played at La Defense Arena since Sunday – Marchand walked to the starting block to roar in the 200m breaststroke, less than two hours after your butterfly wins. Defending 200m breaststroke gold medalist Zac Stubblety-Cook of Australia called the stoppage his favorite part of the race. “Him having that moment, enjoying that moment, was incredible for the sport of swimming,” said Stubblety-Cook, who won silver behind Marchand.

Marchand led by wire in the breaststroke: every time his head came out of the water, the fans shouted encouragement in unison. “Every time he took a breath, he heard a huge noise,” says Marchand.

After touching the wall, he climbed out of the pool, raised his fist and waved to the adoring local crowd as if he were royalty.

To crown a memorable night in Nanterre, Chinese Pan Zhanle broke his own world record in the 100 m freestyle, finishing with the best time ever, 46.40 seconds. Zhanle, it is worth noting, is not one of the Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a banned substance in 2021.

Ledecky will swim in the 4x200m freestyle relay final on Thursday before turning her attention to the 800m freestyle preliminaries on Friday. The final of this event is scheduled for Saturday. Marchand has the 200m individual medley final on Friday.

More slapping and strutting, perhaps, to come.

But it won’t get any better than Wednesday, when Ledecky and Marchand will own Nanterre and set new standards for their sport, together.

– with reporting by Alice Park