French youngster Leon Marchand produced a dazzling performance to shatter American great Michael Phelps’ long-standing 400m individual medley record on the opening day of swimming events at the World Aquatics Championships.
Phelps’ mark of 4:03.84 set at the 2008 Beijing Olympics was his last remaining individual world record but it fell to the 21-year-old Marchand who started superbly and clocked 4:02.50 – smashing the old record by 1.34s – to beat Carson Foster who took silver.
There was cheer for home fans at the Marine Messe Fukuoka Hall as Japan’s Daiya Seto took the bronze finishing more than six seconds behind Marchand.
“That was insane, one of the most painful things I’ve done. It was amazing to do it here and the time is crazy,” said Marchand, who is coached by Phelps’ former mentor Bob Bowman and attends Arizona State University. “The best is yet to come.
“It’s excellent, I train every day for that. I’m two seconds faster than my previous record, I beat the world record, it’s amazing… I don’t know what to say, I’m so happy.”
Phelps had a storied swimming career and is arguably the greatest Olympian – in any sport – of all time after claiming a scarcely-believable 23 Olympic gold medals, in addition to his 26 World Championship titles.
Marchand, who was presented with his medal by Phelps himself, is a potential hometown superstar going into next year’s Paris Olympics and he will also be favourite in the 200 IM.
Phelps congratulated Marchand on his performance— (Getty Images)
Earlier, Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus set a world record by blazing to the finish line in a battle royale for the women’s 400m freestyle title.
Titmus eclipsed the mark of 16-year-old Canadian prodigy Summer McIntosh set at her national trials earlier this year, finishing in 3:55.38 – a stunning 3.35 seconds ahead of silver medallist and 2022 champion Katie Ledecky. Victory means the 22-year-old has not lost a 400m freestyle race for five years.
“I’ve put in a lot of work the past six weeks that I’ve been really happy with and took a lot away from trials,” Titmus said. “I swam the way I wanted to, but knew I had enough time to turn that around and came here tonight and tried to be fearless.
“Summer and Katie are both class acts and there’s hardly any faults in their racing. I knew the only way was to try and take the win... I guess (it was) whoever had the most fight in the end and whoever had the best left in the tank.”
The clash between the trio had already generated “race of the century” hype, 20 years after Ian Thorpe beat Pieter van den Hoogenband and Phelps at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Although it was not as close a contest as fans would have liked, Titmus’s blistering effort laid down a marker for next year’s Paris Olympics.
