By Madeline Folsom on SwimSwam
Earlier this week, world record holder Leon Marchand spoke to French media, and said one of his goals for this summer’s European Championships was taking down his own 400 IM World Record.
Marchand broke the record in the 400 IM in July of 2023, swimming 4:02.50 to take more than a second off Michael Phelps‘s former record of 4:03.84 and his own personal best of 4:04.28. Since then, Marchand has missed that mark, swimming 4:02.95 at the Paris Olympics to win the gold medal in the 2nd fastest time ever. At the 2025 World Championships in Singapore, he swam 4:04.73, a little more than two seconds off his record time.
He told the media, “The idea is to beat my best times. The program isn’t finalized yet, but I know I’ll be doing the 400 IM on the first day. If I qualify, it would be a race where I’d like to break my record.”
He went on to say that breaking the record was something he is looking to do in the “near future” and that taking it down in Paris “would be fantastic”.
The European Championships will run for seven days and the men’s 400 IM is the first event on day one, Monday, August 10th. Other day one events are the women’s 100 free, men’s 50 fly, women’s 200 backstroke, and men’s 100 breaststroke. The 400 IM final will be the 3rd event of the evening session and the only individual final of the day.
Marchand also spoke with the media about his training, saying, “this is the first time that March has been so difficult in terms of volume, intensity, and the challenge of stringing together sessions.”
In 2022, 2023, and 2024, Marchand was on the NCAA schedule, which meant that he fully tapered for the NCAA Championships at the end of March, and would have had a lighter March in regard to training.
Last year, in 2025, Marchand was dealing with injury at the start of the year, and was likely still making his way back to full training, returning to Bob Bowman‘s group at the University of Texas at the end of March.
He also detailed one of his recent practices where the swimmers did 72x50s long course. Marchand did one free/one fly, then two free/two fly, three free/three fly… up to eight free/eight fly on about 10 seconds rest apiece. He said “that’s the kind of set we were doing. Once is fine, but when you have nine a week…”
Marchand spoke about recovery as he is getting older (he will be 24 on May 17th), saying that, “physically that it was really tough because I’m not 19 anymore. My body adapted incredibly well 3-4 years ago. Now, I react very differently. I’ve had to adapt my recovery methods a bit, so there’s a constant state of fatigue, but we managed well.”
He will return to racing at the end of April at the Speedo For Lauderdale Open from April 29-May 2.
All quotes are translated from their original French.
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