Sports
What makes Leon Marchand a superstar? He's smaller, lighter and unbelievable underwater
Leon Marchand is an enigma.
Over the past eight days, he has produced one of the best Olympic pool displays. It featured an unprecedented double gold in the 200m breaststroke and 200m butterfly.
Only one athlete had ever made the final in both strokes over any distance. That was Mary Sears in 1956, with the American winning bronze in the 100m butterfly and finishing seventh in the 200m breaststroke.
Marchand, who also won the 200m and 400m individual medleys, took four individual golds in four Olympic record times. Those performances are not normal, even by elite standards. The 22-year-old is the fourth swimmer and first French Olympian with four individual golds in one Games — joining the United States’ Mark Spitz (1972), East Germany’s Kristin Otto (1988) and the U.S.’s Michael Phelps (in 2004 and 2008).
The Marchand-Phelps comparisons write themselves. Marchand’s coach at Arizona State University, Bob Bowman, previously coached Phelps. In early 2023, Bowman said, “Leon is reminding me of Michael in 2003.” Bowman was talking about what Leon swam, not how he swam it, praising his ability to produce fast race times despite high training volumes.
Physically, Marchand is more like Spitz than Phelps. Phelps is six centimetres (2.4in) taller (193cm versus 187cm) and raced seven kilograms heavier (84kg compared to 77kg) than the Frenchman. Marchand isn’t matching the American’s 79-inch wingspan. Part of Marchand’s allure is how he bucks the trend of Olympic swimmers getting bigger and taller.
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A 2020 paper collated nine studies analysing Olympic swimmers between 1968 and 2016. It was “advantageous for swimmers to be older, taller, and heavier”. From Mexico City in 1968 to Rio de Janeiro in 2016, world-class men’s 200m swimmers (Marchand’s favourite distance) changed drastically: on average, they became 8.6cm taller and 7.9kg heavier.
The authors of that paper spoke of the “natural selection” of athletes into events based on their body types and suitability for strokes. Freestyle swimmers were the biggest, all about power and big, long limbs. Butterfly swimmers were the smallest, with back and breaststroke swimmers in the middle. Imagine a Venn diagram where Phelps sits in the overlapping free/fly/back rings, and Marchand in breast/fly/back.
Francisco Cuenca-Fernandez, a PhD graduate from the aquatics lab at the University of Granada and a professor with a research specialism in race analysis, explains how Marchand’s atypical size is advantageous.
“Swimmers are usually large because a large body is associated with a long lever arm, which is very beneficial as it allows propulsive surfaces, like the hands, to stay underwater longer, applying force.”
But that bulk is a double-edged sword. “This has a downside,” says Cuenca-Fernandez. “A large body can also generate much more resistance. In Marchand’s case, his events have always been middle-distance — the 200m and 400m — which indicates that a large, muscular body would have been very energy-consuming.
“We haven’t seen him compete individually in the 100m butterfly or 100m breaststroke and he hasn’t stood out in his freestyle relay performances either. He is a swimmer who doesn’t stand out for his height or musculature, but this makes him incredibly efficient.”
Efficiency.
It was the difference between Marchand and Hungary’s Kristof Milak in the 200m butterfly final, where sprint specialist Milak led at 150m but Marchand’s back-end speed saw him close hard. Cuenca-Fernandez uses that word repeatedly to describe Marchand.
“He moves easily and this saves a lot of energy. This is where he’s making the difference,” says Cuenca-Fernandez, who roots Marchand’s efficiency in a combination of his training under Bowman and innate physiology, a virtue of having former Olympian parents.
It is how Marchand breaks his opponents in the medley, with his strongest strokes first (fly) and third (breaststroke) and his weakest second (back) and last (free). “This efficiency is maximized in butterfly and breaststroke, which are strokes where it’s challenging to maintain cadence since the body is constantly accelerating and decelerating, leading to quick fatigue,” says Cuenca-Fernandez.
Marchand in the semi-final of the 200m butterfly event in Paris (Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images)
Breaststroke is leg-dominant, too, so guys with big upper bodies and wingspans benefit less. “It’s evident that his race strategy is based on being strong in these two strokes,” says Cuenca-Fernandez, explaining that Marchand’s natural strengths work tactically.
“Start strong in butterfly, using powerful undulation (wave-like movements with the body). In backstroke, maintain position, since I can breathe much more easily than in the other strokes. In breaststroke, I take advantage of my underwater efficiency, both in the underwater phase after pushing off the wall and the gliding phase, and push hard again. In freestyle, I give whatever I have left, less fatigued than others.”
Marchand’s efficiency — combined with elite conditioning — makes him so good underwater. He glides and kicks like nobody else. In the 200m breaststroke final, he was 1.8m up on second-place Zac Stubblety-Cook at the final turn but stayed underwater for so long that he surfaced after his nearest opponent even further in the lead.
In the 400m individual medley, Marchand spent 100m of that gliding underwater, around one-fifth more than his opponents — Phelps spent 77m underwater in the same race in Beijing in 2008. Marchand spent 14.77m of the allowed 15m underwater off the final turn when he set the 400m individual medley world record in Japan last year.
“That incredible underwater swimming is a characteristic of swimmers trained by Bowman,” says Cuenca-Fernandez. Even Phelps is astounded by Marchand’s glides. Bowman once said they were “not a subject, they have always been excellent”. Marchand is built to swim underwater, with what Bowman calls a torpedo-like body and “no hips”.
Cuenca-Fernandez says: “The depth of his underwater undulation stands out — this trajectory towards the bottom of the pool after the push-off from each turn.
“This provides an advantage — as long as you have the lungs for it — the reduction of wave resistance. When a group of swimmers reach the wall at full speed to turn, there is a mass of water dragged that ends up crashing against the wall.
“If your turn is too close to the surface and you are a little ahead of your competitors, that mass of water hits you just as you are flipping or starting your push-off and slows you down. However, if after your turn you go to the bottom of the pool, that mass of water passes over you and you manage to avoid it.”
It depends on the athlete — specifically their build and strength in swimming on the surface — but underwater swimming is typically faster as turbulence and drag are reduced (although this doesn’t apply to free, where surface swimming is faster than back, fly and breaststroke).
In one of Cuenca-Fernandez’s studies, assessing performance variability of swimmers going through championship rounds, they identified that the push-off in the first five metres from the turns was the only consistent variable. Things like stroke volume, start, and underwater kick all changed.
“The ones who reached the finals were always faster, they had better underwater gliding skills and offered less resistance,” he says. “The speed of that push-off was always the same for a given swimmer. I’m sure that if we analyze Marchand in depth, he would be one of the fastest at that point since he is a swimmer who generates very little resistance.”
Marchand’s style is something psychologists call an underdog effect — when athletes succeed despite disadvantages. Often these are sociocultural, economic or geographical, none of which apply to Marchand, but he is a fourth-quartile baby (May) and, physically, matured late.
Santiago Veiga Fernandez, a former head coach of the Spanish Swimming National Youth Team, with a PhD in swimming race analysis, explains it. Marchand, he says, benefitted from “great developmental work” by his French home coach Nicolas Castel from the Toulouse Dolphins club. During his junior years — 16 to 18 — Marchand developed the basic skills that allowed him to excel underwater.
“When competing at European or World Junior Championships, Marchand did not dominate. He was a bronze medallist at a couple of events (European bronze in 200m breaststroke and 400m individual medley; world bronze in 400m individual medley). His body was not fully developed, but he already showed great levels of skill for gliding and underwater swimming.”
He had to be good at gliding underwater — he didn’t have freestyle power or speed anywhere near that of Phelps. Marchand’s 100m free personal best is almost four seconds slower, although he’s a better freestyler than Phelps was a breaststroker (Marchand’s 200m personal best at breaststroke is more than five seconds faster than Phelps’).
Scheduling is a significant reason the breaststroke/fly double is unique, as they happen in the same evening session, which forces specialism in one (World Aquatics actually had to change the Olympic schedule to let Marchand attempt it).
Another reason, Veiga explains, is technique differences. “The kicking action in butterfly and breaststroke are quite the opposite and swimmers with a great range of motion in one stroke may not excel in the other.
“In breaststroke, you can only perform one underwater dolphin kick after diving off the block or pushing off the turning wall, whereas in butterfly, swimmers can perform multiple underwater dolphin kicks.”
These kicks require the feet to flex in different ways (because the arm strokes are different). It might seem small, but at the highest level, details make performance differences.
Marchand in the butterfly heats (Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
And in the breaststroke final, emphasising the difference in technique (Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
Given his exponential progression since Tokyo, the thoughts of where Marchand might be in four years are scary. Improve his freestyle and the world records will tumble. Veiga says that the 200m breaststroke showed Marchand becoming a versatile racer, as he swam hard from the off to compensate for Stubblety-Cook’s fast final 50m, rather than winning it late himself.
Ultimately, Marchand has put French swimming in a better place. They didn’t take a gold in the pool at the last two Games and managed four medals combined in Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro, as many as Marchand has in Paris alone.
France’s golden boy has changed the face of swimming. There’s more than one way to win an Olympic gold. Or four…
(Top photo: Adam Pretty/Getty Images)
Charles Barkley may be the hottest free agent to hit the market next year, if he hits the market.
As Warner Bros. Discovery wrangles with the NBA in court, hoping to win back a piece of the league’s media rights for 2025, there is already a line of suitors for Barkley, the company’s biggest star in sports.
ESPN’s chief of content, Burke Magnus, said Tuesday he would be interested in bringing Barkley to the network if he were available. Asked at a Front Office Sports conference in New York if he could see a world with Barkley at ESPN, Magnus said he could.
“Yeah,” Magnus said at the “Tuned In” conference. “That would be a perfect world. … I would be lying if I said we weren’t interested in Charles. The entire industry is interested.”
NBC chairman Mark Lazerus said he would also have interest in Barkley. NBC will start broadcasting the NBA next season.
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Whether Barkley would have interest in ESPN or NBC is another question. The Basketball Hall of Famer, who has been part of TNT’s iconic “Inside the NBA” studio show since 2000, said in August he would remain with TNT Sports even after it lost the NBA. Barkley is in the third year of a 10-year, $210 million deal.
“I love my TNT Sports family,” Barkley, 61, said in a statement in August. “My #1 priority has been and always will be our people and keeping everyone together for as long as possible.
“We have the most amazing people, and they are the best at what they do,” his statement continued. “I’m looking forward to continuing to work with them both on the shows we currently have and new ones we develop together in the future. This is the only place for me.”
In July, Disney, NBC and Amazon won the bidding rights for the NBA’s next media deal, which will start with the 2025-26 season and last 11 years. The agreements with the three companies are worth $77 billion in total. WBD did not get a piece of the rights and sued the NBA to enforce what it says are matching rights from the current contract.
That lawsuit is currently in New York State court with a schedule that has put it on course for trial in April.
Required reading
(Photo: Cliff Hawkins / Getty Images for The Match)
Sports
Artist behind fake Kamala Harris Eagles posters doesn't know how they ended up at Philadelphia bus stops
A poster that featured Kamala Harris in Eagles gear with a caption that read, “Kamala, official candidate of the Philadelphia Eagles,” was spotted at a Philadelphia bus stop and later proven to be forged last week.
The artist who took credit for the piece, Philadelphia native Winston Tseng, released a statement on Monday claiming the poster was supposed to be a satirical piece and never meant to be put up in a public space. He denied any knowledge of how it ended up there.
“The absurd poster of Kamala Harris wearing an Eagles helmet is my artwork, but I don’t know how it ended up at bus stops in Philadelphia,” Tseng wrote.
Tseng claims that the piece was not meant to be promotional for the Harris campaign when he designed it. Instead, it was meant to satirize the concept of celebrity or sports entities giving endorsements of political candidates as a whole.
“My work uses brands and advertising to communicate societal issues. On one level, the poster is a parody of the ads we see along I-95 promoting the ‘official beer’ or the ‘official accounting firm of the Philadelphia Eagles.’ But the title of this work is ‘Political Endorsement,’ and that’s the issue at hand,” Tseng said. “Why the f— do we care who Hulk Hogan or some corporation endorses? Yet here we are, and I think the strong reaction we’ve seen to this satirical endorsement is a reflection of our times.”
The posters were initially spotted during the first two days of September on 16th and Spring Garden streets, 18th Street and JFK Boulevard, and 34th and Walnut streets in Philadelphia. The poster pictured below at 16th and Spring Garden streets was later removed last Monday afternoon.
However, the posters also had a URL printed underneath the caption, which directed to an Eagles voting website that shows past Pennsylvania and New Jersey primary election voting deadlines from the spring. It also provided links for first-time voters, polling locations, and guidelines on voting registration and requesting a ballot.
EAGLES’ POLITICAL AD ENDORSING KAMALA HARRIS FOR PRESIDENT IS ‘COUNTERFEIT,’ NFL TEAM SAYS
Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at the Enmarket Arena August 29, 2024 in Savannah, Georgia. Harris has campaigned in southeast Georgia for the past two days. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Tseng has also previously posted photos of his designed posters in which he appropriated a company’s official brand at Philadelphia bus stops, including a Ben & Jerry’s-themed poster of President Biden eating an ice cream cone, with the caption “Rocky Road to Democracy.”
Tseng has also posted a photo of one of his posters that featured former president Trump, in which he appropriated the Pepto Bismol brand. That poster showed Trump against a white background with the text: “Nausea, heartburn, insurrection, upset stomach, diarrhea.
Meanwhile, the Harris Eagles posters came just one week before the presidential debate between Harris and Trump, at the National Constitution Center Tuesday night in Philadelphia, which will be broadcast on ABC.
The posters garnered a strong reaction out of one Philadelphia resident, identified by FOX 29 as Joe from South Philly. The man took it upon himself to cover up the bus station posters with printed-out screenshots of the Eagles’ official statement decrying the posters as counterfeit.
Philadelphia Eagles fan, Joe from South Philly, printed out copies of the Eagles statement to coverup a fake political ad that appeared to show the team endorsing presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. (FOX 29)
“My concern here is not that someone is expressing an opinion, which everyone is entitled to do, but this person is lying to everyone that comes and uses this stop. That’s what I’m very concerned about — the fact that they’re spreading lies that the Philadelphia Eagles endorsed Kamala Harris as a candidate for president in the United States,” Joe said. “We all know that Philadelphia’s the battleground for Pennsylvania, and these types of lies are things that prevent honesty in the election process.”
A city spokesperson told NBC Philadelphia that someone must have broken into a contained space where bus station posters are stored, and replaced the ones that were in there with the counterfeit Harris endorsement posters.
“This was not a digital breach; whomever is responsible for the illegally placed posters, broke into the securely covered shelter ad space and somehow put the posters in the space. Intersection has advised the City’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS) that they plan to conduct a full inventory tomorrow of all bus shelters, and remove any illegal posters. The City has a process to review all bus shelter ads but this, again, was not a digital ad.”
Pennsylvania could be the “tipping point” in the 2024 presidential election, according to electoral and polling analysis. Betting favorites with Harris taking Pennsylvania showed the vice president winning 270 electoral votes compared to Donald Trump’s 268, but if Trump were to win the commonwealth, that would put him at 287 electoral votes to Harris’ 251.
Polls in the state have showed Trump gaining ground and closing Harris’ previous lead in the state.
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U.S. Soccer finally got its man Tuesday, announcing it has hired Mauricio Pochettino to coach the men’s national team.
Pochettino, a former player who grew up in Argentina and most recently coached Chelsea in the English Premier League, reportedly reached an agreement weeks ago to coach the U.S. men through the 2026 World Cup. But the deal couldn’t be closed until the final details of his departure from Chelsea last May were cleaned up.
With those issues resolved, he will be formally introduced as the team’s new coach at a news conference Friday morning in New York and will manage the U.S. for the first time in next month’s friendlies with Panama in Austin, Texas, and Mexico in Guadalajara. Mikey Varas, who formerly coached the U.S. under-20 team, managed the senior national team in this month’s games with Canada and New Zealand.
“The decision to join U.S. Soccer wasn ‘t just about football for me,” Pochettino said in a statement. “It’s about the journey that this team and this country are on. The energy, the passion and the hunger to achieve something truly historic here, those are the things that inspired me.
“I see a group of players full of talent and potential and together we’re going to build something special that the whole nation can be proud of.”
Financial terms of the deal were not released, but a U.S. Soccer spokesperson confirmed it is a multi-year contract that runs through the 2026 World Cup, which will be co-hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The U.S. will play two of its three group-stage games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
Pochettino, 52, guided Tottenham to a Champions League final and won a Ligue 1 title with Paris Saint-Germain but he has never coached a national team. He will be tasked with righting a U.S. squad that grew stagnant under former coach Gregg Berhalter, bowing out of this summer’s Copa América in the group stage, the first time the U.S. has been eliminated in the first round of an international tournament it was hosting.
The USMNT went into Tuesday night’s game with New Zealand having lost three straight games in the same year for the first time since 2007. U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone said Tuesday she’s confident Pochettino can turn that around.
Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino arrives at the stadium prior to a Premier League match against AFC Bournemouth at Stamford Bridge on May 19 in London.
(Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
“Mauricio is a world-class coach with a proven track record of developing players and achieving success at the highest level,” said Cone, a World Cup winner as a player. “His passion for the game, his innovative approach to coaching and his ability to inspire and connect with players make him the perfect fit for this role.”
While the Americans were criticized for conservative, risk-averse play under Berhalter, who was sacked in July, Pochettino is known for a high-pressing, attacking style of play. His teams are encouraged to pressure opponents and that style has produced results in three of Europe’s top five leagues.
A center back, Pochettino signed his first contract with Newell’s Old Boys at age 17 and played in nearly 500 matches in Argentina, Spain and France. He also made 20 appearances for Argentina’s national team before retiring as a player in 2006 and beginning his coaching career with Spanish club Espanyol three years later.
He went on to manage at Southampton, Tottenham and PSG before landing at Chelsea, signing a two-year contract before the 2023-24 season. But he was sacked two days after a season in which Chelsea finished sixth, leaving the coach and the club, chaired by Dodgers’ part-owner Todd Boehly, to sort out the terms of Pochettino’s separation from Chelsea, which was reportedly paying him an annual salary of $13.2 million.
JT Batson, U.S. Soccer’s chief executive officer, was said to be instrumental in helping the two sides cut through that while also negotiating a contract with Pochettino that is reportedly the largest in the federation’s history. Berhalter earned $2,291,136 in 2022, including $900,000 in bonuses.
“Hiring Mauricio is a step forward in our mission to compete at the highest level and make a lasting mark on the global soccer landscape,” Batson said. “Mauricio understands the unique potential of this team and this country and he shares our belief that U.S. Soccer is on the cusp of something truly special.”
Chelsea coach Mauricio Pochettino spreads his arms and reacts incredulously during an FA Cup semifinal against Manchester City Wembley Stadium in London on April 20.
(Alastair Grant / Associated Press)
U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker, who led the search for Berhalter’s replacement after firing the coach in early July, overlapped briefly with Pochettino at Southampton, where Crocker served as academy director.
Pochettino is one of the highest-profile names to lead the national team and is just the second foreign-born U.S. manager since Boris Milutinov in 1995.
“Mauricio is a serial winner with a deep passion for player development and a proven ability to build cohesive and competition teams,” Crocker said of the coach, who is fluent in English, Spanish and French. “His track record speaks for itself.”
Berhalter, a former U.S. Soccer and Galaxy player under Bruce Arena, was hired in December 2018, 14 months after the U.S., under Arena, failed to qualify for a World Cup for the first time in 32 years. He led the team to a Gold Cup championship, two CONCACAF Nations League titles and to the round of 16 in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. With a record of 44-17-13, he left with the best winning percentage of any coach who worked more than seven matches with the national team.
But he was undone by the team’s poor performance in the Copa América, which the U.S. exited in the group stage after losing to Panama and Uruguay.
“After the Copa América ended, there was a mutual feeling within the dressing room of disappointment,” forward Folarin Balogun told ESPN last week. “But we knew that we had to put it to rest, we had to go away, reflect and come back for this camp.”
Only Arena (81) and Jurgen Klinsmann (55) won more games with the U.S. than Berhalter, who survived an earlier challenge to his job after former teammate Claudio Reyna and his wife, Danielle, upset over Berhalter’s treatment of their son Gio during the 2022 World Cup, informed U.S. Soccer of an alleged 30-year-old physical confrontation between Berhalter and the woman who would become his wife.
The federation launched a months-long investigation into the incident before clearing Berhalter in the spring of 2023. Crocker then rehired him 13 months ago for the current World Cup cycle.
U.S. Soccer decided to offer Berhalter a new contract based on his performance and positive relationships with most players but his second stay lasted less than a year.
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