“It’s rare that the French are so interested in swimming,” enthuses Léon Marchand

French swimming hopeful Léon Marchand will try, Monday June 17, to qualify for the Paris Olympics during the French swimming championships in Chartes, where he will start with the 400m medley.

Léon Marchand, the locomotive of French swimming, the one on whom enormous expectations rest at the Olympic Games this summer, enters the fray, Monday June 17, at the French championships which take place in Chartres. A step which is essential to qualify for the Olympics. He begins with his favorite distance, the 400m medley where he has held the world record since last year. In these championships, the 22-year-old Toulouse is aiming for four qualifications in four races.

Without a transition from the United States to France, the swimmer only had a few days to rehabilitate, it had been almost a year since he had returned home. “When I came back, it felt strange, I had the impression that everything was very small: the small streets, the small cars, even the supermarket, everything is small. In Texas, what’s more, it’s a little abused so, it was really shocking in a week, I discovered a lot of things”.

His ambitions, however, are not small. In Chartres, Léon Marchand is lining up for the four events he hopes to compete in at the Olympics this summer, this major event which he is thinking about more and more. “Since I returned to France, of course, I think more and more about Paris with everything that’s happening around with the media, the pressure… The people who talk to me about it too. But this year, I had lots of milestones that I was able to take, so it allowed me to really focus on the two weeks ahead, and not the three months.“. Concerning the pressure, he gets used to it: “There are more cameras than last year, I have the impression“.

Léon Marchand wants to open up more than in previous years. “I’m going to take advantage because it’s true that it’s rare for the French to be so interested in sport, and especially in swimming. I think I need to be a little more natural with all that, that I do what I want to do day to day and then it’s just fun“.