Bob Bowman Unpacks Decision to Coach France Instead of U.S. at Paris Olympics

Bob Bowman revealed one of the reasons why he’ll be coaching with the French at the Paris Olympics this summer is because they don’t care if he also coaches swimmers from other countries — unlike Team USA.

“It just makes it so much better for everyone for me to coach with the French, because the French have no stipulations about me coaching other nationalities and it’s a little different with the USA team, which I certainly respect,” Bowman said at last weekend’s Pro Swim Series stop in San Antonio. “So it just makes sense for everybody because then I can coach everybody I’m coaching now.”

Bowman said there were “several reasons” why he won’t be serving on the U.S. Olympic coaching staff, including the potentially distracting attention surrounding his star swimmer, 21-year-old Frenchman Leon Marchand.

“Last summer, when I was the coach of the U.S. team and I also had Leon and some guys there, I sat down and the first question in the USA press conference was, ‘Will Leon break Michael (Phelps)’s record?'” Bowman recalled. “I don’t want to be in that position, I don’t want to be put Team USA in that position, I would never do that. And I have a feeling that in Paris, Leon might be a little bigger than he was last summer.”

Bowman was an assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic team in 2004, 2008, and 2012 before being promoted to head coach in 2016. He helped coach France at the 2022 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, then went back to being head coach for the U.S. at the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan.

Bowman’s international swimmers, Marchand (200 IM, 400 IM, 200 butterfly) and Hungary’s Hubert Kos (200 backstroke), combined for four individual world titles last summer compared to just five for his American swimmers. He said he spent about “97.5%” of his time focused on Team USA versus his international talents and didn’t see any ethical issue with helping swimmers from other countries.

“There’s a global community in swimming,” Bowman said last summer. “Almost every one of the coaches on this deck is involved with more than one country’s swimmers. It’s ethically okay to me. Bottom line is, I get paid to coach these guys at ASU. I’m representing my country for the love of my country. I’m happy to do that and I have some skills to do that, but I don’t think there’s any ethical question. Everybody gets support. It’s not zero-sum about taking away from the U.S. guys. It’s really not.

“My concern when I’m here is that I’m, No. 1, taking care of every USA responsibility that I have,” he added. “Making our relays as good as they can possibly be. Making sure these athletes are supported to the full extent.  Then, outside of that, I can certainly keep an eye on Leon and see what’s going on. It’s not like he needs that much attention from me. I’m not taking time away from the U.S. guys to say ‘nice job, Leon. Make your breaststroke better.’”

Two months after the 2023 World Championships, Virginia’s Todd DeSorbo and Florida’s Anthony Nesty were named head coaches of the U.S. women’s and men’s squads for the Paris Olympics this summer. Bowman is expected to serve as an assistant on the French staff under Jacco Verhaeren, who was hired as France’s performance director of swimming in 2021 after seven years leading Australia’s swim team.

Two days after leading Marchand, Kos, and the rest of the Arizona State men to their first NCAA title in program history, Bowman took over as the director of swimming and head men’s coach at Texas. His six-year contract is worth at least $2.75 million, plus incentives.

“Obviously I put my heart and soul into ASU, I love it to death,” Bowman said. “I love those guys. When the (Texas) opportunity came up, it was kind of an agonizing month. Let’s just say I haven’t had a lot of sleep for a while because I knew what the ramifications would be. Having said that, the opportunity is one that is so rare in this sport and, quite frankly, so special that I could not say no to it.”

Marchand turned pro and followed Bowman to Austin along with much of his ASU pro crew. Kos entered the transfer portal and committed to train with Bowman at least through the Paris Olympics.

“We have a great group,” Bowman said. “They seem to be right on track.”

Bowman also offered some insight into what lessons he learned from coaching 23-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps and how he’s applying them to his new batch of students.

“You just have to focus on what you’re doing and realize that the challenge of the Olympics is not necessarily swimming the events,” Bowman said. “Everybody’s trained to do that and is capable of doing that, but can you do it in the environment? That’s the challenge. You have to learn how to do a couple things: Number one, you have to learn how to block out some noise, because there will be constant noise. You have to learn how to adapt when things pop up, because they will. You can’t just expect it’s going to be a dream sequence of events where you just go and it happens. Part of my job will be to just fend some things before they even get to them, so it’s kind of a team effort on that. Leon is well aware, and we’ve talked about it for years now, about what that challenge will be like.”

Bowman added that Marchand is pretty independent at this point and doesn’t need him much anymore at big meets.

“The last thing you want to do with a high-level swimmer is make them dependent on their coach,” Bowman said. “He’s very good at knowing what he needs to do and how he needs to do it. We also have built in a system of routines that are basically automatic at this meet. All he needs to know is when his event starts and that lets him know when he’s going to warm up, when he’s going to put his suit on, when he’s going to go to the ready room, what to do after — he’s got a whole thing. He doesn’t really have to make a lot of decisions at the meet, and that’s by design, because the last thing you want to be doing at the Olympics is trying to figure that out. That just has to be part of your DNA at that point.”