Contextualizing Leon Marchand’s 1:52.69 200 IM (Or Trying To)

2025 World Championships

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Graphs and data here came courtesy of Barry Revzin and Andrew Mering, as well as the excellent ‘The Chlorinated Chronicles‘ on Substack

Leon Marchand absolutely shattered Ryan Lochte’s world record in the 200 IM in the semi-finals tonight, clocking a time of 1:52.69 to hack 1.31 seconds off the mark from 2011.

His coach Bob Bowman spoke about going for the 200 IM World Record when explaining the decision to drop the 200 fly and 200 breast, where he is the reigning Olympic Champion and #2 performer all-time in both. However, Marchand had only been 1:57.23 so far this year, and was just 1:57.63 this morning.

That did include a 53.88 front end, just off World Record pace – something was clearly brewing for the Frenchman.

We’ve tried to put together some stats and graphs to contextualize this swim, and although a picture may be worth a thousand words we don’t quite have the server space to include all the images we’d need to fully capture the feeling of watching it. We’ve tried our best though – here’s an even (bakers) dozen.

1.31 seconds

The amount of time which Marchand broke Ryan Lochte‘s record by. There are only two other events currently – the short course women’s 400 IM and 1500 free – where the scaled gap between the #1 and #2 swim all-time is as large. The women who own those marks are Summer McIntosh and Katie Ledecky – two of the most dominant swimmers in history.

2.44 seconds

The amount of time, that Shaine Casas, the second-fastest swimmer in the semi-finals, finished behind Marchand. Casas swam the #22 swim all-time and became the 6th-fastest man in history with his time of 1:55.13.

1.149%

That is the margin which he was under the previous world record by. As single record jumps go that is the 15th-largest since 2000, and #6 if you only count races 100m or longer. Of those non-sprint drops ahead of him, two are super-suited, and two are Michael Phelps.

4.00 seconds

That is now the margin in seconds between Marchand and the 25th-fastest performer of all time, Australia’s Leith Brodie. There are zero (0) men’s events in which this gap (scaled to distance) is larger.

1.88 seconds

How far ahead of the record Marchand was at the 150m mark – he turned in 1:24.63 to Lochte’s 1:26.51

31

The number of swims there have been between 1:54.00 and 1:55.31 – the same gap as between Marchand’s time tonight and the #2 swim all-time. Just look at the gulf between Marchand’s swim any every single other swim in history.

5116 days

That is how long Ryan Lochte’s record had stood for – the longest-lived textile World Record. Lochte had one of the best single-meet performances in history in 2011 when he set this mark, which was the first time a super-suited record had been broken since the suits were banned.

7

The number of swims across both the 200 IM and 400 IM that have been faster than the times Phelps swam at the Beijing Olympics. One is from Phelps himself, the 200 IM in 2011, two are by Ryan Lochte, and four are from Marchand – all in the last 24 months. It would not be a leap to say that this number will be nine in four days time.

2.94 meters

Marchand’s distance-per-stroke on the breaststroke leg. He took just 17 strokes through this 50, two fewer than Lochte, and was a full 0.90 seconds faster as he split 32.13.

-4.96597

The Z-Score of Leon Marchand‘s new world record compared to the top 100 performances in history – a measure of how many standard deviations his time is faster than the mean of that group. Ryan Lochte‘s record is just -2.70172 (and was only -2.8699 when he set it), and even Summer McIntosh‘s 400 IM, the next-best of the current records, is only slightly above -4.

For external context, a Z-Score of 5 was enough to conclusively prove the existence of the Higgs boson (a sub-atomic particle) back in 2011.  This number is really, truly, out of this world.

2

The number of medals Marchand would have won in the stroke 200’s (excl. breaststroke) at the Paris Olympics with this time – gold in backstroke and bronze in fly.

69.72 SPM

Marchand’s stroke rate on backstroke. He split 28.40 on this leg – the fastest backstroke split in history.

3rd

This is where Marchand’s swim would rank on the all-time 200 backstroke list, behind only Aaron Peirsol and Ryosuke Irie‘s swims from 2009. On textile swims only, the fastest 200 IM swim is now faster than the fastest 200 backstroke swim – something which has never happened before.

The closest the two have come before is 0.29 seconds back in 2008, and again looking at textile only, 0.54 seconds from 2007.

On fly, his swim would rank 20th all-time and he would be the 6th fastest performer, behind Kristof Milak, Michael Phelps, Luca Urlando, Daiya Seto, and himself.

The current gap between the 200 back and 200 IM records (0.77 seconds), and 200 fly and 200 IM records (2.35 seconds), is the smallest it has been in any period except for one – the Michael Phelps era.

“What’s crazy is that it’s a whole second… and it’s still hard to believe. A 1:52 in the 200m — that’s insane. I’m so happy, it’s just incredible.”

You and us both, Leon.