VIDEO. “I went back to the restaurant but it requires a little more organization than before”, smiles Léon Marchand after the Paris 2024 Olympics

Léon Marchand doit désormais faire face à sa nouvelle popularité. MAXPPP – LP/Fred Dugit

Present at the Olympic parade on the Champs-Élysées, this Saturday, September 14 in Paris, the four-time swimming gold medalist Léon Marchand spoke about the excitement around him in France and his new daily life.

A few days after the end of the swimming events at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where he shone with his exploits in the pool of the Paris La Défense Arena, Léon Marchand warned our colleagues at Le Parisien: “I just realized that I can no longer go to restaurants”.

A few minutes before the start of the Olympic parade on the Champs-Élysées this Saturday, September 14 in Paris, the Toulouse native, who will be seen in Montpellier in 2025, returned to this sentence and his new life.

“That's it, I realized what I had done, I took a lot of perspective”

“I went back to the restaurant but it requires a little more organization than before, he smiled to our colleagues at France TV. But it was especially during the second week of the Games that it was a little difficult for me because it happened to me suddenly. I'm starting to adapt to all this and I'm happy to see people because they're super nice and people often thank me so it's cool."

But he readily admits that he needed time to realize the exploits he achieved in front of his home crowd during the Games. “That's it, I realized what I had done, I took a lot of perspective. I had time to realize what I did and I feel more settled, I want to say”, he said again.