Léon Marchand launched an unusual attempt at a double with a memorable comeback.
Trailing behind for most of the race, Marchand accelerated past reigning Olympic champion and world record holder Kristóf Milák and claimed his second gold medal of the Paris Olympics, winning the 200-meter butterfly.
The crowd at the Arena de La Défense roared on Wednesday night when Marchand touched the wall in an Olympic record time of 1 minute 51.71 seconds. He beat Hungary’s Milák by four-hundredths of a second.
Marchand was coming off a landslide win in the 400m medley and had only just begun her work on the fifth night of swimming: two hours later she will be back in action in the 200m breaststroke, a final for which she qualified with the fastest time.
It turns out the comparison to Michael Phelps isn’t so far-fetched.
