Léon Marchand is not the only athlete to thrill French swimming fans. At the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Maxime Grousset went largely unnoticed – he did not win any individual medals. However, the World Swimming Championships in Singapore have brought him back into the spotlight as the second main figure in French swimming, nearly on par with “King Léon.”
Earlier in the week, “Max'” had set the French team in motion by winning the 50m butterfly, his second world title after the 100m butterfly in Fukuoka, Japan, in 2023. The third title came soon after, just five days later, as he won another 100m butterfly final, setting new French and European records (49.62 seconds) on Saturday, August 2. He finished just ahead of his friend, Switzerland’s Noè Ponti (second, 49.83 seconds), and Canadian athlete Ilya Kharun (third, 50.07 seconds).
Grousset, the distance’s second-best performer of all time, became the first French swimmer to swim the 100m butterfly in under 50 seconds. “What did I just do? That’s crazy!” he said, looking ecstatic after his race. “He set the pace for the others from the very start of the race; he had already partly won. He raced like a boss,” said Denis Auguin, national technical director of the French Swimming Federation (FFN), immediately after the race.
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