Budapest (AFP) – Frenchman Léon Marchand was crowned world champion in the 200m medley on Wednesday in Budapest, a few days after his first title in the 400m medley on Saturday.
With a time of 1 min 55 22/100, and thanks to a phenomenal second part of the race, he beat the American Carson Foster (1 min 55.71) and the Japanese Daiya Seto (1 min 56.22).
He took the opportunity to beat the French record, which he had already improved the day before (1 min 55.75).
This is the third French medal of the day after Maxime Grousset’s silver (100m freestyle) and Analia Pigrée’s bronze (50m backstroke). A performance never achieved before at the Worlds.
For Marchand, the mad harvest of medals continues after gold on Saturday in the 400m medley and silver in the 200m butterfly on Tuesday.
The 20-year-old, who trains with Bob Bowman, former coach of legend Michael Phelps, is now the third French swimmer to have achieved the performance of winning two world titles in the same year after Laure Manaudou in Melbourne (2007) and Florent Manaudou (2015) in Kazan.
In the final of the 200m medley, he showed his power on the breaststroke, in the third length, to take the lead of the race which he never left despite the return of Carson Foster in the fourth and last length, in crawl.
Merchant has ” well liked “its position in water line N.4, because, he explained to the microphone of France 4, “ I was in the middle, I could see everything that was going on “.
” I did well to be at the N.4 lane because Carson really came back hard on me in the crawl. It’s often that, after the first 100 meters I still have a lot of energy left, it allows me to be strong in the breaststroke, that’s where I get ahead of the others “, he added.