Underdog \u2018lost for words\u2019 after shock Aussie history as Olympic champ chokes back tears<\/a><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1753528389_190_poster-fallback.png\"\/)
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O’Callaghan wins gold, Turner bronze | 01:10<\/p>\n
That time had stood since the 2008 Beijing Olympics and was the American great\u2019s last remaining record.<\/p>\n
Marchand became a national hero in France after winning four individual golds at the Paris Olympics a year ago.<\/p>\n
He said it would take time to come to terms with his latest feat, which he described as \u2018insane\u201d. \u201cI\u2019m going to try to sleep well tonight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be tough tomorrow but the final is going to be cool.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to try to understand what I\u2019ve just done. It may take a few months, and after I\u2019ll look at what\u2019s next.\u201d <\/p>\n
Marchand took an extended break from swimming after his Paris Olympics heroics and only returned to competition in May.<\/p>\n
He is focusing on the medley events in Singapore and had said he was going for Lochte\u2019s record.<\/p>\n
Marchand got his world championship campaign under way on Wednesday morning, clocking a time of 1:57.63 in the heats.<\/p>\n
He said he would go all-out for the record in the semi-finals rather than conserve his energy for Thursday\u2019s final \u201cFor me it\u2019s a victory,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still have a little trouble believing it but I\u2019m so happy, it was so good. It\u2019s all the strength work that I\u2019ve done this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phelps was among those who took to social media to praise Marchand\u2019s stunning swim.<\/p>\n
Michael Phelps reacts to Marchand’s swimSource: Instagram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leon Marchand said it would take a few months for it to sink in after smashing the long-standing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,85,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-33852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}