En attendant les vidéos de Léon Marchand (à Budapest 2022, ça avait pris une semaine), voilà l'interview de Nicolas Castel à Eurosport juste après les championnats du monde 2023. While we wait for Léon Marchand's videos (in Budapest 2022, it took a week), here's Nicolas Castel's interview with Eurosport just after the 2023 world championships.

Nicolas Castel 's interview (continued) : "- Can you be a great champion if you're as humble as he is? Don't you have to be greedy and crush others? - N.C.: Of course he's hungry and voracious. But he doesn't show it. He remains modest and humble, that's his deepest nature. - The problem is, if he only brings home one title from the Olympics, it would almost be a disappointment. - N.C.: It would be a disappointment for the public, for the ministry perhaps, but never for us. If things don't work out the way he wants, we mustn't think that it's trivial to take just one title or even just one medal from the Olympics. - He has built his success in Fukuoka on extraordinary underwaters. How does he work them? Is it innate or acquired? - N.C.: When he was very young, he didn't have these strokes, but he was at ease underwater all the same. From the age of 12, he became aware that it was part of a race, that it was a stroke in its own right. He has finesse and a very innate relationship with water. He's fluid by nature. After that, we pushed him a little and he trained more regularly on it. - You can see that he doesn't have a great physique, so there's less resistance underwater. Does that explain the efficiency of his pours? - N.C.: Absolutely. We can see that there are profiles like him emerging and moving very fast. David Popovici, for example, doesn't have the same physique as Maxime Grousset, but he's very fast. Like him, Léon has an excellent power-to-weight ratio. Today, as in the past, you don't need to be bigger and stronger to swim fast. Léon plays on technique, speed and underwater parts. - You've been training him since he was 7. When did you realize you had a phenomenon on your hands? - N.C.: When he was younger, he was smaller and thinner than the others. It wasn't easy for him at first because of his size. On the other hand, he was always very diligent, serious and determined in his racing. He was always striving to improve. At first, Léon wasn't an obvious choice. But when he started to grow up... At around 15 or 16, when he won his first French championship and made the French junior team, we thought we might be onto something. - So Marchand isn't a prodigy who fell from the sky, an innate talent? - N.C.: Or maybe I didn't see it. I was a young coach and we grew up together. I didn't feel it at first, and it just happened as we both evolved. And then we saw other talented youngsters who ended up quitting because of the repetition and intensity of training. There's a funnel that forms and you have to gather other criteria. He also had determination and a balanced lifestyle. Very few people talk about it, but in swimming, if there's no pleasure in daily life, it's complicated to become a great champion. And for him, it's always been at the heart of his project. - Over the past year, he's done nothing but improve. You get the impression that he hasn't yet reached a performance plateau and that he has no limits. - N.C.: That's true. We've identified a lot of areas for improvement. He's still making a lot of mistakes, like on the restarts, where he could be more efficient. On his first 50 m, he could be better. He can also gain in power. He's far from having reached his glass ceiling. Today, I don't know many athletes who train like him. He's involved like no one else. When you ask him to do 15 metres underwater, he doesn't do 14. He always gets the job done. As long as he's enjoying himself and giving 100%, I can't see any stopping point in his progress. -Like everyone else, he has physical limits... -N.C.: Yes, but behind that there's still his technique, which he can improve, and he can optimize a lot of things... -Are you trying to prove to us that he can win 8 gold medals in Paris? - N.C: (laughs) No, I'm looking more at how he's going to manage his career, how he's going to evolve. Today, he's doing im, 200 m breaststroke and butterfly. In the 200 m freestyle, he's not clumsy. In the 100 m, he's starting to gain speed and power. We'll see how things develop. He's still got a lot of room for improvement and we'll be able to pull a number of levers for the rest of his career. I can't see the limit. - In the 100 m, do you think he could one day be up there with the best? - N.C.: In the 100 m breaststroke relay, we saw that he didn't have much experience; he hadn't mastered the stroke. But if one day he works on it more seriously, why not one day compete in the 100 m butterfly or 100 m breaststroke? That's a long-term perspective, for Los Angeles perhaps, not for next year."