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NANTERRE, France — For a moment, there is silence. Tennis. It is dense. Really. And then there is a loud noise, and before the swimmers of La Défense Arena touch the water, the noise explodes all around them, more than you would believe possible, more how people can shout.
But now, Leon Marchand has a way of encouraging others to push their limits. He has done it himself many times in these Games.
As Marchand hit a relentless, perfect butterfly into the water, the 17,000 in La Défense cheered with hope and anticipation. Marchand has already won two gold medals at these Olympics, and the crowd wants to see a third now.
Marchand touches the wall ending his butterfly death just two hundredths of a second behind China’s Wang Shun – much shorter than the blink of an eye. When the field makes the first of three turns in the 50-meter pool, the audience is shut out. This is the moment that the crowd – the entire French nation – has been waiting for a long time.
If you’ve watched any of these Olympics, you already know the broad strokes of Marchand’s story: raised in Toulouse, educated in America at Arizona State under Michael Phelps’ old coach, Bob Bowman, he returned to Paris this summer as a conquering hero. his way.
Marchand inspires a feverish borderline fandom wherever he goes. All over Paris during these Games, when Marchand swam, the action stopped. In cafes, in shops, in other Olympic venues, people want to see him swim, to see him win. That’s how the Olympics work – when he wins, so does the rest of France.
The butterfly leads directly to the backstroke in the individual medley, and before Marchand took more than a few times, without stopping, he caught Wang. At the end of this 50 meter distance, he will have made up the 0.02 second deficit for a .20 second advantage.
Wherever Marchand enters La Défense – indeed, even before he hits the floor – chants follow. Sometimes, it’s “Le-On!” beg-beg. Others, clapping, clapping, “Le-On!” Whatever hits the crowd at the moment, and with Marchand, there’s always feverish inspiration. He walks with a mixture of humility, looking like he can’t quite believe that this is his life, and the well-earned confidence that comes from being the greatest person in the world at what you do.
Near home, Marchand falters and it penetrates into the chest, and it is here that the unity of the feverish crowd really takes hold. Every time Marchand’s head comes out of the water, La Défense chants in unison, “Hey!” 16 times Marchand’s head rises above the waves, 16 times he hears the crowd roar with joy. And when he hit the wall, his lead over Duncan Scott of Great Britain was 1.73 seconds.
None of the 10,000 athletes of the Games arrived here with the weight of the country on their shoulders. Paris Olympics organizers and Paris city officials have been fighting a seven-year public relations battle, and until the Opening Ceremony, victory was hard to come by. There was a commotion to clean the Seine, questions about the disruption of daily life, fear and panic about security. Combine that with the French’s general distrust of any kind of big party like this, and nearly two-thirds of the country was indifferent, concerned or angry about the Olympics like a few weeks ago.
Marchand changed all that. Not only that, of course, but the impact of the French athlete dominating the French Olympics cannot be denied. Even President Emmanuel Macron is there Friday night, and he is losing his mind at Marchand’s regime, along with almost everyone in the stadium. The thousands of French fans who were there – and the millions more watching on television – will remember this moment, this feeling, this pride.
When Marchand started running in his freestyle, cheering turns into something else. Have you ever been to a concert so loud that the music blew past the upper reaches of your hearing and became just noise? That’s what happens at La Défense, a lot of noise inspired by Marchand, created by his fans.
If the noise lasts longer than one minute, 54.06 seconds – a new Olympic record, we will be looking at Parisian hearing loss. Marchand touches the wall more than a second before Scott, and there it is – gold medal No. 3.
He exits the pool as the stadium descends into cacophony. Without Marchand’s injury to guide them, fans break out into a variety of songs — some by the Le-Ons, some by “Seven Nations Army,” some humming in jest. Marchand stands up, raises his arms to the sky in exultation, and extends his arms to the entire stadium. He clasps his hands together in thanks, then points to another section high above the pool deck.
Camera crews are circling him, punching his fellow swimmers who come to congratulate him, but they’ve been giving him love all week.
“He had an amazing week,” Chad le Clos of South Africa said a few days ago. He is an amazing asset to France, and I can’t do anything but cheer for this boy, as he is at home here in France.
“He’s a developed talent,” Australia’s Kyle Chalmers added. “I’m lucky to share the pool deck with him.”
“It’s an honor for me to be able to run in his generation,” said American Carson Foster, just seconds after finishing fourth, 2.04 seconds behind Marchand.
About an hour after his swim, Marchand walks out to the small medal stand at the other end of the pool. As she sings the words to “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, someone raises a matching scarf behind her, a common slogan “This is Paris” — “This is Paris.”
However, next to that, the simplest sign speaks volumes. The words in the box are “Lord Leo– “King Leon.”
Tonight, these Olympics, for all of France – Leon Marchand reigns.
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