SwimSwam sat down with Bob Bowman, Director of Swimming & Diving at Texas and coach of Olympic superstar Leon Marchand, to debrief his experience in Paris.
At the top of the podcast, Bowman reveals that Marchand looked “very average” in practices two weeks before the Olympics. Apparently this is a trend for Marchand, as Bowman said he also looked that way before the best short course meet of his career, the 2023 NCAA Championships in Minnesota.
There was a public practice at their training camp in Vichy, France where Leon suited up in front of 1,000 fans in which Bowman said he looked “very good on that”.
Bowman continues on with stories of Leon throughout the meet and what it was like seeing his other non-French athletes have success. He ends with a preview of the upcoming season for Texas swimming, including a quad-meet with Texas, Virginia, Arizona State, and NC State.
Bob has been a great addition to Team France.
I heard he’s gonna join Team Australia next.
When Bob said he wasn’t sure Leon was going to do the double… why didn’t you ask which event he was going to swim?
So, obviously a bunch of his swimmers, especially Leon and Regan did great at the Olympics. But it seems like there were also some who did not. Chase, Luca, Simone, Ryan Held for example. I would have been interested to hear what happened with each of them as well.
A lot of those swimmers are on the older side and Luca has been plagued with injuries the last few years
Chase is a 30yr old swimming 4 IM, Luca went back to Doughty at DART, the back and forth with Simone must have played a role imo, and Held is Herbie’s swimmer
Appreciate the nod to Paige Madden’s 800 in this interview. For the USA, the usual tendency for the elite Olympic level middle distance swimmers who deal with a setback is to then just double down on the hopes of securing future relay roster spots (suddenly, everyone becomes a 100/200 free specialist). An athlete in the mid-20s here went the opposite direction. 7 seconds drop off the PB AFTER a Trials meet is insane, let alone at this age. She and Bob have completely changed the game, and have shown others something like this is possible.
Did Bob make Leon another asthma victim?
what do you mean? a reason/excuse to use an inhaler?
Someone copied my nickname
I know! I saw that Bob Bowerman was only interested in his prized protege: I got it!! He is so proud of Leon Marchand!! By the way, what is Marchand ‘s field of higher learning ‘ his academic studies besides competing with the AMERICANS and other international swimmers for the NCAA championships of 2025?!!
Does Bob interested in the AMERICANS, or just the French Leon Marchand, hmmm 🤔?!!
Because I only hear as an American, French Leon Marchand this: French Leon Marchand that, Bob Bowerman ‘s protege ONLY!!! But yet, still coming to America, but Bob’s new legacy is French Leon Marchand and non American athletes for great support and success, I got it!!
Zip it up when you’re done
2/10 rage bait
Wow! Leon is a once in a generation athlete..Most athletes, and coaches get it. Yeah, there will be the ” what about me” athletes. Colemans questions were about Leon, and Bob answered them..if the interview had been about Regan, they would have gone into depth about her. The fact that Bob has produced the two greatest swimmers of all time, is frankly a testament to his expertise and vision. It was a great interview!
Bowman is a great coach for sure, and Marchand a great athlete,
but Marchand is still far away of the greatest of all time conversation
He’s pretty far from Phelps, Ledecky, and Sjostrom foresure but he’s already tied for 2nd in individual Olympic golds for male swimmers so he’s prob starting to inch his way into the conversation for second best male swimmer of all time. The only thing preventing him from being second best male swimmer to Phelps is longevity but if he has another dominant quad that leads to an individual gold or multiple, he’ll stand alone as #2 in male individual golds which would prob put him in the drivers seat for male vice Goat in swimming
Relays will always hold him back. Even though we objectively know that Americans and to a lesser extent Australian or Chinese swimmers get sort of a ‘raw numbers’ boost from relays that isn’t available to swimmers from all countries, those raw numbers still weigh heavy on a lot of opinions in debates like this.
His field was actually computer science if you were wondering
Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s
How many shots deep were you?
“Slept for 11 hours”- guess I got one thing in common with an Olympic champ
bb still relevant post mp
damn, almost like he knows what he’s doing
big bob rocks