PARIS, France — Turns out, those comparisons to Michael Phelps weren't farfetched at all when to comes to Léon Marchand.
They certainly weren't a burden for the 22-year-old Frenchman.
Marchand completed one of the most audacious doubles in swimming history Wednesday night, winning the 200-meter butterfly and the 200 breaststroke about two hours apart at the Paris Games.
Two grueling races. Two very different strokes. Two Olympic records. Two gold medals.
Take that, Phelps.
Thrilling the home fans and claiming the spotlight even on a night when Katie Ledecky romped to another gold medal, Marchand claimed his second and third victories at La Defense Arena and stamped himself — with the Olympics not even a week old — as one of the faces of these games.
After rallying to beat world-record holder and defending Olympic champion Kristóf Milák in the 200 fly with a finishing kick for the ages, Marchand made it look downright easy in the 200 breast.
He led all the way, touching in 2 minutes, 5.85 seconds as more than 15,000 fans — many of them holding up cardboard cutouts of his smiling face — nearly blew the roof off La Defense Arena.
“Léon! Léon! Léon!” they screamed, a chant that was sure to carry on through the night in Paris.
Marchand started swimming for ASU in 2021. Before he was a Sun Devil, he was going for gold as a competitor at the Tokyo Olympics.
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