It doesn’t occur at each Olympics however when a homegrown athlete galvanises the host nation with a few golds to get the crowds firing, there’s actually nothing prefer it. Ian Thorpe did it at Sydney 2000. Mo Farah at London 2012. And little question about it, Paris 2024 belongs to Léon Marchand.

Referred to as ‘La Baguette’ for causes I consider are as primary as ‘as a result of he’s French’, the 22-year-old bagging 4 particular person swimming gold medals this week greater than vindicates the pre-games comparisons with the one and solely Michael Phelps, who has 23 Olympic medals hanging up in a room someplace.

Zoom in on Léon Marchand atop a Paris 2024 podium although (not the baguette space, SVP), and it seems he has extra in widespread with Phelps than a grasping obsession with gold medals. He likes watches too – particularly Omega watches. Certainly, the duo truly teamed up for Omega’s Paris 2024 marketing campaign. Entitled ‘Legends Encourage Legends’, it actually might have jinxed issues had Marchand not delivered, however who am I kidding – Omega is thought for guaranteeing precision on the Olympics (it has been doing so since 1932), so as soon as the Swiss watchmakers referred to as it, Marchand reaching legend standing was by no means doubtful.

Whereas Phelps has been recognized for carrying variations of the Omega Seamaster through the years, Marchand appears to fancy himself as a grasp of one thing else: velocity. On all 4 medal ceremonies inside Paris’s electrical swimming enviornment, the Frenchman has rocked an Omega Speedmaster Chronoscope.

“Maybe you’d count on a swimmer of his calibre [watch pun alert] to put on a Seamaster 300M, or Planet Ocean, however as a substitute he selected the Speedmaster Chronoscope,” says Fratello’s Robert-Jan Broer, a person who is aware of so much about Omega watches.

Omega’s official watches of the Paris 2024 are a pair of 43mm Speedmaster Chronoscopes in metal and gold. Relationship again to the Eighteen Eighties would you consider, the mannequin’s concentric triple-chronograph scales on the dial have at all times grabbed the headlines however the newbies boast hand-wound actions. Marchand isn’t carrying one among these although – maybe too apparent a alternative, or possibly it was a superstitious factor? As an alternative, he’s carrying a virtually an identical metal model price £8,900 – the primary distinction being the pink markings on the subdials, bezel and seconds hand, and a clear caseback so that you get to peek on the internal workings of the motion as a substitute of a stable Paris 2024 one.