Léon Marchand's cold call email could end in homegrown Olympic glory

Former Arizona State University swimming coach Bob Bowman might have spiked a random email that showed up in his inbox four years ago if the sender’s name hadn’t rung a bell.

“Thinking back when I first got that email, the first thing I thought was, ‘Marchand? Xavier Marchand?'” Bowman said recently of his prized pupil, Léon Marchand, and his father, Xavier Marchand, a two-time French Olympic swimmer. “I thought about his dad. I wonder if they are related and they were, of course.”

Bowman, best known as the coach of all-time swimming great Michael Phelps, did some quick research to find out who this young, emailing stranger was.

“So then he basically said, ‘Do you think maybe you’d be interested in having me on your team?'” said Bowman, who recently led ASU to the NCAA team swimming title before taking the head job at the University of Texas. “And then I looked up his times and I was like, ‘Uh, yeah, most certainly we’d be happy to have you on our team.'”

Bowman coached Marchand to 10 NCAA titles at ASU and will be poolside in Paris when the French swimmer competes for his native land in home waters.

Marchand last year swam an all-time fastest 400-meter individual medley, breaking a record formerly held by Phelps.

And in his three seasons under Bowman at ASU, Marchand won a pool’s worth of NCAA titles: three times in the 200 breast; twice in the 400 IM and the 200 IM; and once in the 500 free, 400 medley relay and 400 free relay.

And now he could be about a month away from becoming the toast of France as that nation’s best hope for Olympic glory.

While many Olympians were absurd prodigies from the time they could first walk, jump or swim, Marchand said the preteen version of himself had no visions of glory.

He famously took two years out of the pool as a youngster because the water was too cold for his liking.

So when the International Olympic Committee, seven years ago, named Paris as 2024 host, Marchand’s reaction amounted to little more than a shrug.

“At that time, I was not really good at swimming. I was not even like thinking (of making) national finals and stuff,” he told NBC News recently. “So I don’t think it was really an idea (of Olympic swimming on home waters) in my mind. I just heard the news and I was, ‘I’m sure that’ll be cool to do it, but I’m so far from it.’”