Leon Marchand Opens Up on “Sickness” That Halted Him From “Crazy Times” Despite His Recent NCAA Star Performance

The 21-year-old, Leon Marchand was in the news to break his world record at the 2024 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships in Indianapolis, USA, competing for the Arizona State Sun Devils. He not only bagged a gold medal but also swam his best, which was 4:02:31, surpassing by 3:87s from his previous NCAA record during the Pac-12 Championships.

The 5x World Champion, however, felt the need to elaborate on his sickness and the afflictions that he had to go through while on his journey to finish first.

Leon Marchand sorting hardships before getting triumphant

“Yeah, that was not the best year for me. The first semester was hard because I got a lot of sicknesses and all that stuff and I had to go back to training and start all over again.” While everyone was doing crazy times practicing for competitive swimming, the 400m individual medley gold medalist was just training on his own, a feeling that demotivated him as it was taking a long time for him to recover.

Quoting, “The feeling was not good“, Leon Marchand continued to state that he had to somehow buckle himself up for the strife. He told the SwimSwam channel, “I just try to improve every week from there, trying to have more fun, trying to do different stuff, focusing on different at practice, going healthy, and staying healthy.. that was the main thing. Yeah, I think I am back.” Preparing for the upcoming Paris Olympics now, he aims to deliver more than what he gave back in the year 2022 to the sport.

Journey to eye the gold at the Paris Olympics

Leon Marchand had a huge victory during the 2022 World Championships in Budapest by shattering the American swimmer, Michael Phelps‘ world record by an impressive 1.34 seconds in the 400m individual medley. He won the gold, outshining the 23x Olympic gold medalist, Michael Phelps’ record. Coming into the limelight since then, there are extremely high hopes from Leon Marchand this year, ahead of the Paris Olympics.

Since he became the first swimmer to swim the 400m in time less than 4min 3sec, Michael Phelps had himself honored the star swimmer with a gold, symbolizing to pass the torch to a new record bearer. Leon Marchand since then, has been on his path to writing his legend, keeping in mind the pressure inherent in his new status. Focused particularly on building mental strength, he has his eyes on clinching the gold in the 2024 Olympics, with a fresher world record this season.

Read More: NCAA Swimming: Leon Marchand And His Long History Of Breaking Records