France’s Leon Marchand smashed Michael Phelps’ last individual world record, winning the 400m individual medley on the first day of the eight-day swimming world championships.
Also on Sunday, Australia’s Ariarne Titmus won the 400m freestyle over Katie Ledecky by 3.35 seconds, beating the world record by seven tenths.
Marchand, a 21-year-old who trains at Arizona State with Phelps’ running coach Bob Bowman, clocked 4 minutes, 2.50 seconds in the 400m IM in Fukuoka, Japan.
It broke Phelps’ record of 4:03.84 from the first of his eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Phelps held the record since 2002, giving him the longest world record reign in any Olympic event since World War II. according to swimming statistics.
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Last year at worlds, Marchand swam the second-fastest time in history, missing Phelps’ world record by 44 hundredths. Phelps attended the race called at Peacock on Sunday.
“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 others [star swimmers]. Let’s say I want to create my own path, I don’t want to follow Phelps’.
Later this week, Marchand swims the 200m butterfly (where he won silver last year), the 200m breaststroke (he is the fourth fastest man ever) and the 200m IM (reigning world champion). He can drop the 200m breast as the semi-finals start 20 minutes before Thursday’s 200m IM final.
Phelps, who met Marchand for the first time after Sunday’s preliminaries, believed after last year’s performance that he would soon be erased from the individual world record books.
“Hopefully, fingers crossed, I’ll be greedy and try to hold that record for another year,” he said last September.
Phelps held world records in the 200m freestyle, 100m and 200m fly and 200m and 400m IM. When he retired in 2016, he still held records for the butterflies, but American Caeleb Dressel and Hungarian Kristof Milak broke them in 2019.
Phelps still holds world records as part of relays (4x100m freestyle, now the oldest world record and the last remaining one of 21 world records for events from the 2008 Olympics and 4x200m freestyle).
Earlier on Sunday, Titmus won a 400m freestyle that included the three fastest women in history. The Australian, whose world record was broken in March by Canada’s 16-year-old Summer McIntosh, took that record back in 3:55.38.
“I came in tonight and just tried not to be afraid and compete like I’m that little girl again,” Titmus, who said a lot of things in her personal life were “overriding” her early 2023 swim, told Australia’s Nine Network. “It has been a hard year for us. I feel like everything just came together at the perfect time. I feel like this win is my most satisfying.”
Ledecky, who won silver in Titmus at the 2019 World and Tokyo Olympics, was pleased to win silver again for her 23rd career world medal. Titmus skipped last year’s worlds, won by Ledecky, to focus on the Commonwealth Games.
“[Titmus] I just took off at 200, and I didn’t have what I wanted on my back [half of the race],” Ledecky told Peacock. “I’m excited for all these opportunities we’re going to have to compete again.”
McIntosh was passed by Ledecky and New Zealander Erika Fairweather on the final lap to finish fourth.
In the men’s 4x100m free relay, Great Britain posted what would have been the fastest time of the morning heats, but was disqualified for leaving the block too early in an exchange.
Australia’s 19-year-old Sam Short won the men’s 400m freestyle in 3:40.68, beating Olympic gold medalist Ahmed Hafnaoui of Tunisia by two hundredths in the world’s fastest time in 11 years. Short was seven tenths off the world record pace at the 350m mark.
“Unbelievable,” said Short, who he had back surgery for melanoma immediately after missing the 800m and 1500m freestyle finals at last year’s world championships. “I got goosebumps thinking I was in the running [the Olympic gold medalist].”
Americans Kieran Smith, the Olympic bronze medalist, and David Johnston were ninth and 17th in the heats. It was the second time in history that no American reached the final of the 400 meters.
Australia’s Kaylee McKeown was disqualified after the women’s 200m IM semi-finals for what appeared to be an illegal backstroke turn. McKeown won silver behind American Alex Walsh last year. Walsh was the fastest qualifier in Monday’s final.
The World Swimming Finals continue Monday at 7 a.m. ET, live peacock.
