It doesn’t come along very often that a swimming event interrupts a track event. Maybe never. It is due to modern technology.

Léon Marchand was well ahead on his freestyle leg in his 200im race and the crowd at the pool was screaming their champion onto his fourth gold. In our modern world we can watch live events from our mobile devices and this created a cheer from the thousands of French fans in the Athletics Stadium too. Unfortunately for the 400m running event for the decathlon, which had just had the decathletes; ‘take your marks’, the cheer grew in volume and the start had to be abandoned.

Officials and commentators were confused, they obviously were not looking at their phones, and the athletes were ignorant too of the swimmer, however after a long pause, as the cheering settled and high-fives settled, the decathlon could continue. The officials now aware of what had happened.

Swimmer Leon Marchand affected the entire nation of France as their new hero, transcending onto the athletics field. Who’d have thought?

(Side note: the athletes in the decathlon were not negatively affected and had a fair start once they had a restart without having started at all in their race)

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