The four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist has a hidden and unlikely talent. He also excels in this other discipline.
Léon Marchand may have become the biggest star in French sport at the 2024 Paris Olympics. During this Olympiad in France, the swimmer won no less than 5 Olympic medals, including 4 gold medals and a bronze during a relay.
The Frenchman is made for swimming, he has physical abilities and a technique that are almost flawless, which allow him to be, at the present time, the best swimmer in the world. They will perhaps also allow him to become the greatest swimmer of all time in a few years.
But Léon Marchand has not always devoted his life to swimming and even has an improbable talent, as he confided in a long interview for Le Monde after the Olympic Games. In this interview, the great darling of French athletes first admitted that he was not very gifted for sports “terrestrial” : “With my friends, we often played football or went jogging before training, and as I wasn’t very good, I acted as referee…”
Quickly, however, the future pool champion will prove to be much more at ease in a rather improbable discipline: the Rubik’s Cube. An activity in which it turns out that the young athlete was and still is prowessing. “I even took part in the French championships when I was around 15.”he told the daily.
Doing something other than swimming is perhaps the most important thing for Leon Marchand and it is perhaps what makes the superstar so successful in his field. In an interview with Rawthe swimmer also admitted that “before the competition, he tries to detach himself from the stakes until the last moment”. And for that, he has his little technique: it involves reading “manga or watching series”.
Without his outside activities, Léon Marchand could have stopped everything a few years ago. It was necessary to find a balance for the young Frenchman who went into exile in the United States. To get rid of depression, Léon Marchand now devotes 50% of his working time to his mental load, but not only that. Unlike Michael Phelps, the swimmer spends time doing other things and is not in the pools 24/7.