Analyzing The Men’s 400 IM Final In Paris: Two Races In One

Courtesy: Dominique Hérailh

This data is courtesy of the French Swimming Federation.

The French Swimming Federation has released detailed statistics on all the swimming finals at the Paris Olympics, and in this article, we’ll break down the final of the men’s 400 IM.

• See The 200 Fly Breakdown Here
• See The 200 Breast Breakdown Here
• See The 200 IM Breakdown Here
• See The 200 Free Breakdown Here

In this event, we had the chance to see two races in one: Leon Marchand versus the clock, and then the rest of the field fighting for the two remaining medals.

• Marchand took the lead 15 meters and never relinquished it.
• Four other swimmers (Matsushita, Foster, Litchfield and Seto) were competing for silver and bronze.

Let’s start with Marchand’s attempt to lower his world record before breaking down the race.

The first observation that can be made is that his race at the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka was paced more consistently than the one in Paris. This is on display when we compare the standard deviation of his splits for each 50. The standard deviation calculated on the times from Fukuoka is lower than that of Paris calculated on the same basis. This indicates a minor variation in time in the different splits.

In Paris, Marchand was out more aggressively early and wasn’t as consistent within each 100 during the race.

The following graph shows the gaps between Fukuoka and Paris:

The opening 50 is where the Paris race differs most from the Fukuoka. With a 15-meter split of 5.58, Marchand was even faster than at the start of his 200 fly (a race that he paced well). On the first 50, he was 0.65 ahead of his world record pace.

On the second 50, Marchand was 0.31 slower than his WR pace, putting him 34 one-hundredths under pace at the 100m turn.

Opening up backstroke, he kept his lead on the WR line thanks to a strong underwater, but on the second 50, he lost 0.48 to WR pace. Note that in Fukuoka, Foster had closed the gap and put the squeeze on him up to 200 meters.

The breaststroke times were faster than when he set a record. The encouragement of the spectators at La Défense Arena was undoubtedly an advantage in his performance.

All the competitors, except Marchand, were slower on the second 50 of breast than the first. As with the first 50 of fly, it’s possible pushing too hard on the second 50 of breast cost him some juice at the closing stages of freestyle.

After a strong opening 50 of free, Marchand had a bit of a lull from 375 to 400 meters, losing 64 hundredths of a second compared to the last 50m of his world record swim.

Why didn’t he take down the record?

• His start and breaststroke may have been a little too fast, which may have had consequences at the end of the race.
• A lack of competition from the other competitors. Looking at the 200 fly, Marchand likely wouldn’t have gone as fast as he did if he didn’t have Kristof Milak to contend with. Marchand is a formidable competitor who knows how to excel when he is challenged.

Now, let’s break down the race.

We’ll break down the race by 100 meter segments, plus the start.

The start

The gaps after 15 meters were already significant. The only swimmers who stayed in contact with Marchand early were Seto and Matsushita.

Note that the distance traveled underwater by Marchand totaled 102.9 meters in this race, compared to 79.9 for Matsushita, 79.6 for Foster, 89.5 for Litchfield, and 98.2 for Seto.

First 100 Meters

Seto was the only swimmer within one second of Marchand after the butterfly (+0.56). Matsushita lost a lot of time on the second 50 where he split 30.47, the seventh fastest time in the field.

100-Meter Rankings

Second 100 Meters

The gaps continued to grow on the first 50 of backstroke as Marchand was the only one to split sub-32 (31.38).

On the second 50, we can see Foster and Litchfield made up some big ground on Seto.

At the halfway mark, Matsushita was in sixth place, 4.37 seconds behind the leader.

Backstroke Splits

200-Meter Rankings

Third 100 Meters

In his (arguably) best stroke, Marchand made his biggest mark by doubling his lead on breaststroke.

Seto and Foster were neck and neck most of the breaststroke leg, but the American managed to pull ahead at the 300-meter return. There ended up being just 86 one-hundredths between 2nd and 5th with 100 meters to go.

Matsushita was back in 5th place, 7.32 seconds, or 10 meters, behind Marchand.

Breaststroke Splits

300-Meter Rankings

Fourth 100 Meters

We will break down this last 100 meters into two 50-meter splits because these were fundamentally different.

In the first 50 meters (chart below) we see that Foster and Seto continued to bleed time to Marchand while Matsushita and Lichtfield started to gain.

Foster lost his second place to Litchfield (losing one second) and was caught by Matsushita. The silver medal may have been decided there.

In the last 50 meters, the three candidates for the silver and bronze medals were side by side. Matsushita took second place from Litchfield 25 meters before the end.  Foster finished strongly, just 0.04 seconds behind Matsushita.

Freestyle Splits

Final Rankings

The big win for Marchand overshadowed the battle for the other medals, which featured many twists and turns and would’ve made for an absolute thriller if the Frenchman wasn’t in the field.