Marchand To Manage His Injury Setback By Upping His Self-Care Game En Route To LA2028
Léon Marchand on the long-term prognosis of his injury: "I'm gonna try to do better on the ... outside thing of the pool. I would say I need to prepare better, warm up better. There's a lot of things I can do better to not get another injury in the future." His drive? "More records..."
Not every day can be "Léon-mania" day, but even when M. Léon Marchand has an injury that will confine him to the stands where the 200m and 400m medley unfold at the Centre Aquatique Olympique Métropole du Grand Paris this week in Paris, there's a sense of occasion when he walks in the room.
Don't get me wrong. It's not the four-times Olympic swimmer back in the city where he built his very own aquatic arc de triomphe for all the world to see who seeks to be set apart from the rest of the best at the European Championships eve-of-battle press conference.
He walks in, he takes his seat when asked, he exchanges a few smiles and jokes with his teammate in Texas, Hungarian ace Hubert Kós, Yes, his status - Olympic immortal, France and beyond - does indeed set him apart (four golds in a range of events including butterfly, breaststroke and both medleys is, in fact, unique) but it was the seemingly eternal instinct of blazers - whichever kind might be moving the pieces - to control proceedings and frame "our wonderful athletes" in news-management speak that stood out here this morning in Paris.
Swimming has waded itself into a sport that relies on in-house generated content to get its story to fans in-between Olympic Heights.
A European Aquatics webinar of media officers was going in the press room while I wrote those words - and the missing link in all the thoughts about audience reach was how to grow the audience, how to reach and wider audience far beyond the fan base; and how every major sport you can mention has something that swimming does not: constant mainstream written-media presence and coverage. The discussion in swimming remains in the shallows, maturity ahead.
The same room was where the swimmers had spoken earlier. On the stage, we heard from Hubert, and from Marrit Steenbergen and from Noè Ponti, each of them outstanding in their own right - but none in their home capital and tick-boxed for time-management.
Waiting for Léon...
Before Marchand arrived, it was explained how it would go: 5 mins in English, with all media questions put through European Aquatics (we added two to the list, without issue, for the official interviewer to put on behalf of all of us) and then 10 minutes (it tuned out to be 8), same procedure, in French, all questions for the home media put through two mainstream media colleagues.
Not ideal and unlikely to generate the kind of insight that flowed from the huddles reporters enjoyed with Kós and Ponti after the PR part of the press conference was out the way (reports to follow).
Below is a reasonable stab at what we did hear from Léon. In summary, as we knew, he is not 100% recovered from the adductor injury that has put breaststroke out of bounds for a while, his withdrawal from the 400IM ion day 1 and the 200IM later in the week confirmed yesterday:
Craig Lord
Today, asked about his injury and prognosis, Marchand said:
"I really wanted to do the breaststroke and the IM this week, but 2-3 weeks ago, I re-injured myself in practice, so it was really hard. I didn't know if I was going to be able to do the IM, so I did an MRI like 3 days ago, and it's like 70% healed, but it's not enough... it's still risky to do it. So I didn't want to like ruin the whole week. It was a pretty hard decision, but I decided to do a reduced schedule and only do butterfly and freestyle." ... "I think in 2-3 weeks it will be fine. So it's pretty bad timing, you might say. I'm gonna try to do better on the ... outside thing of the pool. I would say I need to prepare better, warm up better. There's a lot of things I can do better to not get another injury in the future."
It remains to be seen if he will compete in the 4x100m freestyle and medley relays later in the week, but he will race on day 1 tomorrow, after all, if the French heats quartet make it through to the final of the 4x200m freestyle.
Then, Marchand will race the 200m butterfly, on Friday and in the rounds, and then the 400m freestyle win curtain-closing Sunday next.
