Leon Marchand of France saw a huge growth in his Instagram followers this past week. He entered the meet with just over 200,000 followers on Instagram and currently has over 1.1million followers.
Marchand has made history this week, winning four Olympic gold medals, and setting Olympic Records in all four events as well. He also swam the “dirty double” with the men’s 200 fly and 200 breaststroke finals on the same night.
Follow Marchand On Instagram Here
Even before the games, Marchand already had a decent array of sponsors, including Louis Vitton. Louis Vitton was also a sponsor of the Paris 2024 Games.
In addition to his following skyrocket during the Games, Marchand was already on an upward trajectory over the last year and a half. As of May 2023, he only had about 51,000 followers despite already breaking numerous NCAA records and winning the 200 IM and 400 IM at the 2022 World Championships.
Marchand’s biggest increase this week was yesterday, Saturday, August 3rd when he gained 256,447 followers on the day. That increase brought him over the million mark.
Swimmers At The 2024 Paris Olympics With The Most Followers
Politely let me know in the comments if someone has been missed
| Swimmer | # of Followers |
| Leon Marchand | 1.1M |
| Katie Ledecky | 787K |
| Florent Manaudou | 746K |
| Caeleb Dressel | 712K |
| Adam Peaty | 702K |
| Thomas Ceccon | 567K |
| David Popovici | 458K |
Marchand is the swimmer in Paris that has the highest amount of followers. Notably, Cody Simpson has more followers than Marchand but Simpson did not qualify for the meet with the Australian team. Simpson has a total of 5.1 million followers.
Katie Ledecky is the only female swimmer on the table above. Summer McIntosh of Canada 251K followers, Kaylee McKeown of Australia has 159K, and Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom has 335K. Hong Kong’s Siobhan Haughey also has a large following with 334K.
So few female swimmers have above 250K. Other than those mentioned in the article, I am only aware of Simone Manuel (now right at 250K).
Counting retired swimmers, Pellegrini is probably the most followed female swimmer with 1.9 million
Alright, Marchand’s become too mainstream now. Time to extend my Kharun fanboyism even further
What having a breakout Olympic performance in front of your home crowd does
More like in front of the world