Ten days before the deadline, Léon Marchand preferred to give up on the Short Course World Championships in Budapest. If the Toulousain will not fill the medal counter of the swimming federation, his DTN, Julien Issoulié instead looked for the positive in the non-participation of the French jewel in the Worlds. In any case, he assured RMC Sport not to fear saturation of the prodigy.
“No, I think we are trying not to make too much effort and fall into fatigue that would not be necessary,” argued Issoulié. We are more about an athlete who has experienced lots and lots of things and who kind of wants to go back to training. Even though it may seem boring to some, it's also where he has the most fun, in fact. Because they are them, with themselves and not with all the expectations. It's not fed up with swimming, it's rather fed up with the whole environment. »
Rather than the particular rhythm of competitions, Marchand would therefore rather like to stay in a phase – more controllable and less restrictive – of training. “2024 has been very intense, I have done a lot of big competitions and I am exhausted,” he wrote the day before on Instagram.
“He had a year that was ultimately very long, with so many emotions that today he is done,” says Issoulé. Because, for a young man of 22, we can't put ourselves in his place but I imagine that everything he has experienced, you still leave a few life points. And at some point, you also have to know how to recover and fall back into what makes up the swimmer's DNA, that is to say going back to training a little discreetly in your corner, working. »
Since his 4 gold medals at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the 22-year-old swimmer had dived back for the World Cup. He is therefore far from being unemployed. “It’s good that he had this ability to say to himself: I don't want to go too far and do one competition too many and have a bad time, insists the French DTN. I believe that Léon, above all, wants to return to Léon the athlete, and not necessarily Léon the number one sportsman of the year in France and abroad. »
