France's Léon Marchand makes history with golden double in Olympic pool

Thomson Reuters

France's Olympic poster boy Léon Marchand completed an unprecedented 200 metres breaststroke and butterfly double on Wednesday with his third gold of the Paris Games, raising the roof at a rocking La Defense Arena.

Australia's Zac Stubblety-Cook took the silver and Caspar Corbeau of the Netherlands the bronze.

The 22-year-old Marchand, who won the Individual Medley on Sunday, sent sound levels off the scale as he added the 200 breaststroke to the butterfly gold in the same distance that he had won barely two hours earlier – and both in Olympic record time.

To win both titles was an astonishing achievement. To do it at a single Games absolutely remarkable. To take double gold on the same night, with a medal ceremony in between, truly the stuff of fiction.