Michael Phelps claims Leon Marchand delivered ‘the greatest double in the history of the sport’ after the Frenchman won two Olympic gold medals in Paris on Wednesday night.
In front of 17,000 fans in La Defense Arena, Marchand was cheered on by a loud contingent of French supporters as he kicked off his evening by beating the reigning champion and world-record holder, Hungary’s Kristof Milak, in the 200m butterfly.
Less than two hours after winning his first gold, Marchand returned for his second event of the evening and delivered a commanding performance to win the 200m breaststroke.
The 22-year-old Frenchman, who made his Olympic debut in Paris three years ago but didn’t win a medal, is the first swimmer to win two golds in one evening in 48 years after East Germany’s Kornelia Ender achieved the same feat in 1976.
Phelps, meanwhile, remains the most-decorated Olympian of all time with 28 medals from his career in the pool and the 39-year-old American still holds the record for the most golds, 23, in the history of the Games.
‘I think the easiest thing for me is that’s probably the greatest double I’ve seen in the history of the sport,’ Phelps said of Marchand’s achievement on NBC’s Olympic coverage.
‘To be able to go 1.52 and 2.05… the kid can obviously swim.
‘We know that and if we didn’t know it before, he’s going to be here a long time and he’s going to make a lot of noise.
‘The voice, the cheer, everything there, the electricity. I can’t wait to talk to him to hear what it felt like.’
Phelps was also blown away by the performance of China’s Pan Zhanle, who smashed his own 100m freestyle world record after Marchand completed his double on Wednesday evening.
The 19-year-old registered a blistering time of of 46.40, lowering his previous record by a full four tenths of a second, while Australia’s Kyle Chalmers won silver and Romania’s David Popovici took Bronze.
‘Winning the 100m free by over a second… holy crap, that is mind-blowing for me,’ Phelps said of Pan’s new record.
‘I’ve never seen a win of that margin in that race I don’t think in my career.
‘To go 46.4, that’s unheard of. To be that much closer to going 45 seconds in a long course 100m freestyle, I can’t understand that, I really can’t.’
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