The biggest star of the Paris Games took down Michael Phelps’ Olympic record in the most difficult event, putting his uncanny physical gifts and work ethic on display in front of a roaring hometown crowd.
PARIS — The roars were deafening, rattling around La Défense Arena, pressing down on eardrums, vibrating the air. The screaming voices were urging the man of the hour, the day, the Olympiad, to go faster in pursuit of glory.
“My objective was to break a record tonight,” Marchand said. “I felt really good. In the last , I took advantage of the crowd because I knew I was ahead, I knew I was an Olympic champion.” And then they went inside and made more noise. The entire arena sang a French song in unison 12 minutes before the race. They cheered over the top of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” then they watched Marchand smoke the water.
was creating a hydrodynamic profile of its elite swimmers—essentially measuring how easily they go through the water.“He has the best results I’ve ever seen,” says Ricardo Peterson, one of the data analysts who worked on the project. “By far.” “He has a uniform body, in the streamline position, from shoulders to feet,” Peterson observes. “He’s an outlier in terms of morphological characteristics.”
That helps explain how he can do what he does without overwhelming physical prowess. Marchand on dry land is an unremarkable sight; he’s about 6'2" and not overly muscled. His handshake is as fluid as water—which, come to think of it, might be telling. Adds another ASU swimmer, Grant House: “Everybody breaks down at our practices eventually, and I’ve only seen him break down about three times in three years. When he does it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s human after all.’”
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