French public enthused by home athlete’s four golds but Chinese doping scandal made for a tense atmosphere
Soon enough they will be playing rugby again at the Arena in La Défense. It’s a kit stadium, and after the Paralympics finishes, the two Olympic pools inside it will be drained, packed away, and put up again in their new, permanent, locations. The scaffolding grandstand will be taken down, the pitch laid down and the posts reinstalled ready for Racing 92’s next home game. Maybe by the time their new signing Owen Farrell is standing ready for the kick-off, the crowd’s great shout of ‘Allez!’ every time Léon Marchand breasted the water this week will have finally finished echoing around the rafters.
At the start of the Games, Marchand, 22, was a richly gifted kid, burdened with an almost unfathomable weight of expectation. France doesn’t have a bona fide star to light up the athletics competition at the Stade de France, which means Marchand, who only won his first world championship title in 2022, came into the Games as the biggest hope they had in either of the Olympics’ two main sports. Marchand’s parents, both Olympic swimmers, encouraged him to move to the USA to get away from all the attention, which only meant the college swimming circuit all of a sudden had a French press pack for the season.
Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/aug/05/paris-olympics-swimming-leon-marchand-france-china-doping
Author : Andy Bull
Publish date : 2024-08-05 11:36:37
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
