Sometimes you get lucky.
As those most famous words of maybe any national anthem were lifting the roof off the packed La Defense Arena you would have been forgiven for thinking La Marseillaise was written for this moment.
Marchons! marchons!
Qu'un sang impur,
Abreuve nos sillons.
Leon Marchand was attempting the impossible.
No one had ever won medals in both the 200m butterfly and breaststroke at the same Olympics. No one. Not even one of the household names of swimming - not even one of those names that people remember after the Olympics are long over - not Phelps, not Spitz, not even those kind of names.
And we are not talking about not winning gold medals in both. We're saying any medals. None of them. The last time anyone had even reached finals in both events was in 1956.
Modern swimming championship programmes often put the finals back to back. In crowded schedules where room has to be made to allow elite athletes space to compete in multiple events it was a no brainer.
Only the mad, or a supremely talented young French man, with the eyes of a whole nation on him, would even try.
So, it being Paris 2024, they changed the schedule and the French went mad for him. No pressure.
There is a massive image of him draped down the side of a skyscraper here in Paris. No pressure.
He had never won an Olympic medal and was facing the Olympic champion and world record holder in the butterfly. No pressure.
He had never even competed in the 200m breaststroke in a major championships before. No pressure.
The finals were taking place on home soil in the dramatic, packed 17,000 seater cauldron of the La Defense Arena full of passionate partisan fans who were here to witness one thing and one thing only. The impossible.
No pressure.
I had come to
Read more on rte.ie
rte.ie
