Three days after his 400m medley victory, Frenchman Léon Marchand won two new Olympic crowns on Wednesday at the Paris Olympics, where the rocket Pan Zhanle won gold and the world record in the 100m freestyle, AFP reported.
The lucky spectators who had tickets for this session that will go down in history were particularly spoiled, since in addition to Marchand's exceptional double, they were treated to a world record smashed by Chinese Pan Zhanle in the main event at the end of the evening.
And that's not all: the eighth Olympic title of the legend Katie Ledecky was also on the program.
In a din that would have woken up the entire La Défense district, Marchand first triumphed in the 200m butterfly before repeating the feat less than two hours later in the 200m breaststroke.
Tested in June at the French championships, the Frenchman's double was unheard of among men at the Olympics for over a century. East German Kornelia Ender won the 200m freestyle and the 100m butterfly on July 23, 1976, in Montreal.
"It was a pretty crazy emotion. I've made a lot of dreams come true since I've been here. Doing this double was something I felt capable of doing. But doing it in real life is something else!", declared the Frenchman.
For his second Olympic Games at 22, Marchand took on this crazy challenge, which even the legend Michael Phelps had never attempted. In five participations in the Olympics, the American had never lined up in two individual finals on the same evening.
- Duel against Milak -
In an arena chanting his name in unison, the Frenchman made his entrance at 8:37 p.m. for the first final of his crazy evening.
Facing Kristof Milak, reigning Olympic champion and world record holder, the Frenchman was far from being the favourite. The eccentric Hungarian had shown himself to be very comfortable in the semi-final by signing, in 1 min 52 sec 72, the best world performance of the year.
Alone in the world in the 400 m medley, Marchand, placed in lane 5 with the Hungarian on his left, had to engage in a fierce battle until the end against the Hungarian this time.
Second, until the 150 m, he managed to come back and then overtake the 2022 world champion in the last 25 m to touch the wall in 1 min 51 sec 21, the fourth-best performance of all time.
But the Frenchman barely had time to enjoy the cheers of the 13,000 spectators before he had to rush to the warm-up pool to begin his recovery.
Because less than two hours later, at 10:31 p.m., he was back on the starting block for the 200m breaststroke final.
And despite the accumulated fatigue, he dominated the race from start to finish, even coming close in 2 min 05 sec 85 to 4/10ths of the world record.
"Now, I'm going to have to do all that, enjoy every moment. And above all, refocus. Because tomorrow, there's the 200m medley!", declared Marchand after his second podium of the evening.
- Pan, "the flying fish" -
While Marchand was undeniably the man of the evening in front of his audience, there was actually a traffic jam of stars in the Défense basin.
In the 1500m, the huge favourite Katie Ledecky did not let gold slip away. The American thus took an Olympic title for the eighth time in her career and at the same time became the second most decorated woman in the history of the Games, just behind the Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina (nine gold medals between 1956 and 1964).
The session began with the final of the women's 100m freestyle, won by the queen Sarah Sjöström, who at 30 years old is competing in her fifth Olympic Games.
It ended with the men's race which saw the victory of the Chinese Pan Zhanle. A revelation at the last World Championships in Doha, where he had set the previous benchmark (46.80), the sprinter smashed his world record to bring it to 46 sec 40, beating his pursuers by more than a second: a chasm over this distance.
"This is the very first time that China has smashed a world record in this event, I think we can be proud of it," said Pan Zhanle in the mixed zone. |BGNES
