Swimming-Marchand returns to world stage after Olympic heroics
(Reuters) -Leon Marchand will be swimming a reduced programme but the home hero of last year's Paris Olympics still intends to make a splash at the world championships starting in Singapore on Sunday.
A year on from those Games, Europe's standout swimmer has dropped two of his four Olympic gold medal events to focus on the 200 and 400 metres individual medley (IM) with some possible relay action.
With the next Los Angeles Games still three years away, the 23-year-old can take the luxury of racing the 200m without restraint.
Having no races immediately before or after on the same day, the Frenchman can push to the limit and that could mean fireworks.
As the swimmer's France-based coach Nicolas Castel observed this week, Marchand wanted to "see what he was capable of".
The world already has a good idea of that: Last November Marchand broke the 200 IM short-course world record at a meet in Singapore and he can become a three-times world champion in the 200 and 400 IM after golds in both in 2022 and 2023.
The 200 IM long course world record of 1:54.00 was set by American Ryan Lochte at the 2011 championships in Shanghai and Marchand clocked 1:54.06 in Paris.
The Frenchman has held the 400 IM world record of 4:02.50 since the 2023 Fukuoka worlds in Japan and can become the first man to hold both at the same time since U.S. great Michael Phelps.
Olympic champions David Popovici (200m freestyle) of Romania, Ireland's Daniel Wiffen (800m freestyle), Germany's Lukas Maertens (400m freestyle) and Italian Thomas Ceccon (100m backstroke) will also be chasing more gold.
Wiffen, reigning world champion in the 800 and 1,500 freestyle, has said he wants Zhang Lin's 800m world record of 7:32.12 that was set in the era of now-banned super-suits in Rome in 2009 and is considered by many to be out of reach now.
"I think that this world record is definitely the hardest to break but I believe that all world records will be broken and I'm willing to push myself to that limit to get it," Wiffen told Swimming World this month.
Maertens, 23, has already done something similar -- last April in Stockholm smashing compatriot Paul Biedermann's 400m world record from 2009 with a time of 3:39.96.
Ceccon is the world record holder in 100m backstroke.
Sweden's Sarah Sjostrom, the most successful swimmer in world championship history with 23 medals and another European star of Paris with gold in the 50 and 100m freestyle, will be absent from the championships as she is expecting her first child in August.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Christian Radnedge)
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