In 40 seconds, Léon Marchand can do a lot of things, like recovering a badly started 200m butterfly against Kristof Milak… or completing a Rubik’s Cube. Invited on the set of the show Clique sur Canal, the four-time Olympic champion managed to solve the puzzle in no time, while answering the questions of his interlocutor, the journalist Mouloud Achour.
“My dad bought me one when I was a kid. I remember that when I couldn’t sleep, I would come wake him up and we would go play chess. We were talking about Rubik’s Cube, he taught me a few things. He didn’t know how to do it, but he wanted me to learn,” rewinds the 22-year-old swimmer, while manipulating the famous object so that each side is made up of nine squares of the same color.
He solved his Rubik’s Cube in 15 seconds
Before testing his swimming level on a local, national, world and Olympic level, young Marchand measured his abilities with the Rubik’s Cube. “I even did the French Championships in Toulouse. I’d been doing it for two months, I said to myself: ‘Come on, let’s go’,” recalls L’Occitan. Mixed experience: “I was one of the worst,” he remembers.
With practice, Marchand even managed to complete the puzzle in 15 seconds, notably thanks to competition equipment which favored speed of execution. Always comfortable with the cube in his hands, the star of Paris 2024 assures that it “always brings [ses Rubik’s Cube] in competition”, because “that [lui] allows you to [se] de-stress a little.”