200 m individual medley, men, 25 m pool

What to remember

Four strokes to master in a single race: that is what the 200 m individual medley asks. In a 25-metre pool, Léon Marchand covered it in 1 min 48.88 s on November 1, 2024, at a World Cup meet in Singapore.

The swimmer from Toulouse, a specialist in medley, breaststroke and butterfly, was coming off the Paris Olympics, where he had won four gold medals, the most by a French athlete at a single Games. His rise had been quick: sixth in the 400 m medley in Tokyo in 2021, he became world champion in both the 200 m and 400 m medley in Budapest in 2022, with a silver medal in the 200 m butterfly.

Short course pools have their own records, recognised by the world governing body since March 3, 1991. In 1994 the 200 m medley record belonged to Jani Sievinen at 1 min 54.65 s; it later passed to Darian Townsend in 2009 and Ryan Lochte in 2012. From Sievinen's mark to Marchand's, the change is only 5%, even though 30 years separate them.