2024 Olympic Previews: Leon Loves It, Leon Loves It Not (200 Breaststroke?)

2024 PARIS SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES

• Pool Swimming: July 27 – August 4, 2024
  • Open Water Swimming: August 8 – 9, 2024
• La Défense Arena – Paris, France
• LCM (50 meters)
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BY THE NUMBERS: MEN’S 200 Breast

• World Record: 2:05.48 – Qin Haiyang, China (2023)
• World Junior Record: 2:08.04 – Dong Zhihao, China (2023)
• Olympic Record: 2:06.38 – Zac Stubblety-Cook, Australia (2021)
• 2021 Olympic Champion: 2:06.38 – Zac Stubblety-Cook, Australia

Will Leon Marchand Swim the 200 breaststroke at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics?

I don’t know, but he better.

Leon Marchand (photo: Jack Spitser)

The International Olympic Committee altered the schedule at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games to move the men’s 200 fly and men’s 200 breast, both possible purviews of home-nation hero Leon Marchand, further apart on day five of the swimming portion of the Olympic Games.

So if he doesn’t, that whole thing will be much ado about nothing.*

Don’t worry, I’m not Mark Wild, and I’m not going to make each subhead of this article a Shakespearian play.

We’ll operate under the assumption that Marchand, who has never raced this event at a major international championship, will swim the event at the Paris Olympics – because that would be the most fun thing to happen.

The 200 breaststroke final would be the second of his two presumed finals coming maybe 90 minutes after the 200 fly final.

While Marchand has not done this particular double, he has done plenty of doubles in the NCAA system, among other meets

A history of Leon Marchand‘s doubles, abridged

2023 World Championships, Day 3

• 200 fly final, won gold
• 45ish minute break
• 200 IM semi, qualified first, dropped 1.5 seconds in finals

2024 NCAA Championships, Day 4

• 200 breaststroke final, fastest time ever
• 60ish minute break
• 40.28 leadoff split on Arizona State’s first-ever NCAA title winning relay (400 free)
  

  Leon Marchand (photo: Jack Spitser)

So can Leon manage doubles? Yes.

The pro is that he should get a pretty substantial gap between the 200 fly and 200 breast – a bigger gap than he’s gotten in other doubles

The con is that this will be the toughest double he’s ever taken on.

I firmly believe that under ideal circumstances, Marchand is the best 200 breaststroker in the world, or at least nail-to-nail with Qin Haiyang‘s World Record.

I think this double will affect him, though, even if only for a few tenths. That is probably enough to cost him gold, though it would still likely leave him on the podium.

Marchand’s best time in the 200 breaststroke is 2:06.59, which makes him the 4th seed at the Olympics. That was done at the 2023 French National Championships, a meet where he also went 1:55.79 in the 200 fly and 1:56.25 in the 200 IM. Via the transitive property of swimming (1:52.43/1:54.82 bests in those races), we have to believe he’s got a 2:05-low in him, at least, in the 200 breast.

A Chinese Duet

If you read SwimSwam with any regularity, you surely know the story of Chinese breaststroker Qin Haiyang. Early in his career, Qin was a good, world-class IMer, but one whose name didn’t scare many on the entry sheets. Last year, though, he took a full pivot to the breaststrokes, won a historic 50-100-200 sweep at the World Championships, and broke the World Record in this 200, which in theory should be the best of his distances.

Since then, it was revealed that he was one of 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive before the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games – though if there was any benefit there, it didn’t appear to help him. He was disqualified in the 200 breaststroke and finished tied-for-26th in the 200 IM.

Qin was only 2:08.87 at the Chinese Olympic Trials, which is slower than the 2:07.55 that he was at the Chinese Trials in 2023 before Worlds. That shows both that he is more-than-capable of big drops at taper time, and that he’s maybe a bit behind schedule. But remember that he raced a ton in the summer and fall of 2023 – Worlds, World University Games, Asian Games, then the World Cup Series. So his timeline might be a bit different intentionally.

What you may have missed was Dong Zhihao breaking the (official) World Junior Record in 2:08.04 for 4th place.

If we look at this field, on paper, it feels like it’s going to take at least a 2:06 to get on the podium in Paris, and certainly doesn’t feel like a 2:08 will be good enough for 4th, but the 19-year-old Dong is the primary youth element in this field.

He was 2:07.94 at Worlds earlier this year to win gold against a field that included a handful of good swimmers, like Caspar Corbeau of the Netherlands and Nic Fink of the United States, but didn’t have the likes of Qin, Marchand, or Australian Zac Stubblety-Cook.

That’s still a confidence-building swim for him, though, and a chance to break through a tough barrier.

The Once (And Future?) King

courtesy of Stephen Thomas

For a two year period in 2021 and 2022, Australian Zac Stubblety-Cook looked like he was building a 200 breaststroke dynasty. He won Olympic gold in Tokyo, broke the World Record at Australian Trials in May 2022, won the 2022 World Championship and Commonwealth Games titles, and was entering his mid-20s, when male swimmers often peak.

The glass has looked less-full since then, however. The second-fastest man in history swam 2:07.40 at Australian Trials, 2:07.89 at the Sydney Open in May, 2:07.50 at the Australian Open Championships in April, 2:06.40 at the World Championships last July for silver, and a whole bunch of other 2:07s before that.

Stubblety-Cook has 2:07s on lockdown. But he’s really just had that one little pop into the 2:06s.

With improvements by Joshua Yong and Samuel Williamson keeping him (probably) off the medley relays, though, ZSC’s biggest advantage this year is the ability to really re-focus on this 200 breaststroke. His race is not a speed game, he is not a 100 breaststroker, and though he was pressed into duty there at many major meets, he feels like a swimmer who will be better when he can focus only on this 200.

That puts the 2:05 back into range for him, though if Qin is on his form last summer, I don’t think there’s much that ZSC can do to catch a 2:05.4.

The other question for ZSC is whether Marchand swims it, and if so, how much the double costs him. Is Marchand a 2:05.4 swimmer who will slide to 2:05.7? Or is Marchand a 2:05.7 swimmer who will slide to 2:06.0?

I have my suspicion on the former, which leaves ZSC as the probable bronze medalist in my mind.

He’s not unchallengeable, but in terms of proven quality, there’s a pretty significant gap from the top three to the rest of the field.

I don’t think ZSC has faded so much as the world just caught up to him really quickly.

Matt Fallon‘s Imperfectly-Perfect Run

World Aquatics Championships
Fukuoka (JPN)
14-30 JULY 2023. photo credit Fabio Cetti

Fallon is a very ZSC-like in the sense of being a true 200 specialist, though they take very different road to get there.

ZSC has a much smoother, more picturesque, long stroke than Fallon, who has a kind of herky-jerky, higher tempo stroke.

But both swimmers like to start slow and close hard (in relative terms). ZSC was 8th at the 100 meter turn at the 2022 World Championships, for example, before eventually winning the 200 breast. Fallon was in 5th, then 3rd, at the 50 and 100 meter marks before eventually taking control of the race and winning comfortably.

Fallon’s build has come with some pitfalls in the form of  injuries and prioritization, but he seems to be peaking at the right moment. He will enter the Olympics officially as the 3rd seed.

He’s getting a little better every year, and if he can just get a little better one more time, he might find himself on an Olympic podium – especially if my hypothesis about ZSC and being able to drop the 100 is correct.

Fallon really doesn’t have the speed either. That’s always going to be his ceiling. His best in the 100 breaststroke is 59.92, and he was just 1:00.35 at Trials. While those in themselves are improvements over what he previously had, at some point, the 200 becomes limited by speed.

The other American entry Josh Matheny was a big surprise at Trials. He finished 2nd in Indianapolis with a 2:08.86 after a 2:08.79 in semis.

He has been as fast as 2:08.32, in 2023. He is really more of a sprint breaststroker than a 200 breaststroker, but a weaker field in the 200 combined with Nic Fink not having a great swim led Matheny into this spot on the Olympic Team. He is not a threat for medals, though he certainly is in the conversation to final.

Rapid Fire

• Japan’s Ippei Watanabe and Yu Hananguruma are 27 and 24, respectively, and both had really good swims at Japan’s Olympic Trials. Yu swam 2:07.07 while Watanabe swam 2:06.94. For Watanabe, that’s only .27 seconds short of the World Record that he set in January 2017 – a swim that at some point looked like a one-hit wonder, but one that he’s now suddenly coming back to. That swim, the first ever under 2:07, was a huge outlier at the time. It would be a fairytale for him if he came back around and landed on the podium in Paris.
• Caspar Corbeau was raised and trained mostly in America, but who has spent the last 10 months training in the Netherlands in preparation for the Olympic Games. With his countryman Arno Kamminga fading from medal contention in this 200, Corbeau is probably the most well-rounded breaststroker in this field – including a best of 59.18 in the 100 breaststroke at the AP Race London International in May. If there’s someone who’s going to make the leap from *this group* to the *top group*, he feels like the guy with the potential to do it based on how his form has been since moving to the Netherlands. He finished 2nd at the World Championships earlier this year.
• Although Arno Kamminga has a best of 2:06.85 in the 200 breast, from December 2020, his best since 2021 is 2:08.22. He swam 2:08.30 last December, which is his seed time. With this 200 coming after the 100, he might swim it, but I think if that were reversed, he would probably drop the 200 from his schedule. He might anyway to ensure preparation for the medley relay.
• Australia’s Joshua Yong swam 2:08.08 at the Australian Trials. He will also swim the 100 breaststroke for Australia. At 23, he’s not the youngest guy in the field, but is still very much on the upswing of his career. Before the Australian Open Championships in April, his best time was 2:10.66. He then went 2:08.54 in April and 2:08.08 in June. It’s hard to see him making another two-second leap in the same calendar year as that improvement curve.

After the 11ths seed Josh Matheny, the seed times start to fall off pretty quickly. The 12th seed is Finland’s Matti Mattsson (2:09.15), with Iceland’s Anton McKee (2:09.19) and Sweden’s Erik Persson (2:09.35) just behind him. Those guys are all in their 30s and have best times from 2022-or-earlier, but could sneak into a final if there are some scratches ahead of them.

SwimSwam’s Picks

Darkhorse? Frankly, there isn’t a realistic darkhorse pick in this race. It’s very much a what-you-see is what-you-get kind of event in terms of the real threats. But when looking through the 2:09s, the one with the biggest upward momentum seems to be Aleksas Savickas of the growing Lithuanian breaststroke tradition. The 21-year-old had a best of 2:13.85 in summer 2022, which moved to 2:09.68 in December 2022, and 2:09.66 at last year’s World Championships. He was 4th in heats before fading to 11th in the semis. He hasn’t had much reason to go full-taper since getting his cut, and his times indicate that he hasn’t, so he might be saving up something special.