The French team finished its World Swimming Championships in style on Sunday with eight medals including four gold. Following Léon Marchand's 400m medley world title, the men's 4x100m medley relay team topped off the competition with a silver medal.
France's Léon Marchand claimed yet another victory on Sunday - the 400m individual medley world title, his second gold medal of the international swimming competition in Singapore.
The French superstar put his rivals on notice by smashing the 200m individual medley (IM) world record and winning gold in the event earlier this week.
He started the 400m IM final in lane one after a below-par performance in the morning heats, which saw him qualify seventh fastest.
But business was back to normal in the final as the 23-year-old took an early lead before moving further and further away from his rivals as the race progressed.
In the end, Marchand touched the wall in 4min 04.73sec ahead of Japan's Tomoyuki Matsushita (4:08.32) and Russian Ilia Borodin (4:09.16).
Marchand broke Michael Phelps's 400m IM world record two years ago in Japan but his time in Singapore was more than two seconds outside his best mark.
This year, the Toulouse native preferred to give up the 200m breaststroke and 200m butterfly, which had brought him gold at the Paris Olympics, to concentrate on the medley events and relays.
Golden butterfly
Just 30 minutes after his individual victory, Marchand went on to scoop up a silver medal in the men's 400m relay beside Maxime Grousset, Yann Le Goff and Yohann Ndoye-Brouard.
The French quartet finished second with a new French record (3'27''96), behind the Russians (3'26''93), but ahead of the Americans (3'28''62).
This brought the French team's overall Singapore medal haul to eight - finishing as the best European nation and third in the world.
Two of the French golds came from Grousset with his victory in the men's 100m butterfly on Saturday, to complement his 50m gold.
The New Caledonian won in 49.62 seconds, smashing his own French record (50.11 seconds), ahead of the Swiss Noè Ponti (49.83 seconds) and the Canadian Ilya Kharun (50.07 seconds).
Grousset's third medal was bronze in the mixed 4x100m freestyle relay with team mates Yann Le Goff, Marie Wattel and Beryl Gastaldello.
The victory went to the American relay team, which improved the world record to 3:18:48. The Russian relay team took the silver medal.
Earlier in the week, Yohann Ndoye-Brouard won two bronze medals, in 100m and 200m backstroke.
Canada dream
In other results, Canada's Summer McIntosh led from start to finish to win her fourth gold on Sunday with a dominant victory in the 400m individual medley.
The 18-year-old phenomenon romped to victory in a championships-record 4min 25.78sec, with Australia's Jenna Forrester and Japan's Mio Narita sharing silver (4:33.26).
China's 12-year-old Yu Zidi was narrowly out of the medals in fourth in 4:33.76.
World record-holder McIntosh was red-hot favourite beforehand and she was never in trouble as she added to her Singapore triumphs in the 200m medley, 200m butterfly and 400m freestyle.
McIntosh's only defeat of the championships came on Saturday when she finished third in the 800m freestyle, with Katie Ledecky dominating that event once more.
McIntosh won three golds, including in both individual medley events, at the Paris Olympics a year ago.
The Americans were victorious in the women's 4x100m medley relay with a time of 3:49.34, beating their previous record of 3:49.63 in Paris.
They also set a mixed 4x100m freestyle world record on Saturday, bring their haul of gold medals to nine.
(with AFP)
