Michael Phelps’ last individual world record could fall on Sunday to the strokes of a swimmer from a rival nation who trains near Phelps’ home and is guided by Phelps’ career-long coach.
Léon Marchand, a Frenchman who swims for coach Bob Bowman at Arizona State, swam the second-fastest 400m individual medley in history at last year’s world championships, coming 44 hundredths shy of Phelps’ world record.
Marchand, 21, defends his 400m IM title at worlds in Fukuoka, Japan, on Sunday, the first day of the eight-day meet.
Bowman, the U.S. men’s head coach at worlds, was separated from Marchand in recent weeks as his student trained in France. But Bowman saw Marchand in Japan on Thursday.
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“He kind of has a look when he’s ready to swim, and he has that [now],” Bowman said. “I don’t know if he can break the record. Maybe. We’ll see.”
Phelps first broke the 400m IM world record in 2002 at age 17. He brought 1996 and 2000 Olympic champion Tom Dolan’s record down from 4:11.76 to 4:11.09. Over the next six years, Phelps broke it seven more times, lowering it ultimately to 4:03.84 at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Last month, Phelps’ world record reign in that race became the longest for any men’s or women’s Olympic event since World War II, according to Swimming Stats.
At different points in his career, Phelps held world records in the 200m and 400m IMs, 200m freestyle and 100m and 200m butterflies.
The only one that he still holds, seven years into retirement, is the 400m IM. It’s further testament to Phelps’ legend for that to be his last record. The 400m IM is known as the decathlon of swimming for including all four strokes over a four-lap endurance test.
Bowman’s favorite swim of Phelps’ record 28 Olympic medals was that world record 400m IM to kick off the eight-gold-medal 2008 Beijing Games.
Leading up to those Olympics, Phelps saw the time “3:07" in dreams, but couldn’t make out what it meant. He told Bowman, who deduced that it was referring to what his 300-meter split time could be in the 400m IM.
Come that 2008 Olympic final, Phelps split 3:07.05 en route to crushing his world record by 1.41 seconds.
In last year’s world final, Marchand split 3:05.94 at 300 meters, but lost 1.55 seconds versus Phelps’ pace over the last 100 meters of freestyle.
“On every stroke, [Marchand] can do something a little bit better,” Bowman said when asked where his new pupil can make up time on his old one. “Probably freestyle.”
At last year’s worlds, Marchand said he had yet to meet Phelps in person, even though Phelps lives near Arizona State.
“I talk to [Phelps] a little bit by [text] message, and he’s always sending some texts to Bob,” Marchand, whose parents swam for France at the Olympics, said then.
Phelps later said that he sees a bit of himself in Marchand’s competitiveness.
“Hopefully, maybe fingers crossed, I’m going to be greedy and try to keep that record for one more year,” he said in Paris in September.
Bowman said Marchand doesn’t have Phelps’ level of intensity (Phelps once put a picture up of rival Ian Crocker to see on a daily basis for motivation), but has better natural speed in the water.
“I don’t want to be compared to Phelps all the time,” Marchand said before last year’s worlds, according to Agence-France Presse. “I’m very, very far from him. And Bowman didn’t just have Phelps, he had a lot of other [star swimmers]. Let’s say I want to create my own path, I don’t want to follow Phelps’.”
NBC Sports’ Andy Dougherty contributed to this report from Fukuoka.
