Swimming-Marchand smashes 200 individual medley world record at world championships
(Reuters) -France's Olympic champion Leon Marchand obliterated the men's 200 metres individual medley world record with a stunning swim of 1:52.69 in his semi-final at the world championships in Singapore on Wednesday.
Marchand shaved nearly one-and-a-half seconds off Ryan Lochte's 2011 mark (1:54.00) set at the world championships in Shanghai to set the Singapore pool alight on day four, the Toulouse native shaking a fist and punching the water in celebration.
Exhausted after the Paris Games where he won four individual titles, Marchand skipped the short course world championships in Hungary last December and suffered injuries that delayed his return to the pool until the TYR Pro Series in Florida in May.
But swimming a reduced programme in Singapore, focusing on the 200 and 400 IM alone for individual events, he has returned to the global stage with a bang.
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
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