Leon Marchand overtakes Antoine Dupont to become France's poster boy of Paris as Katie Ledecky wins gold at fourth Olympics

After Antonie Dupont lit the blue touch paper on these Games on Saturday night by inspiring the host nation’s rugby sevens team to a first gold medal of the Olympics with a rousing second-half display to end Fiji’s two-cycle reign as champions, it appeared the rugby star would be France’s hero.

When he led his Les Bleus team-mates in a victory dance in front of thousands of fans at the Stade de France, it merely added to the feeling that the star of these Games had been born.

But while Duponte’s contribution to the French spirit cannot be diminished, swimmer Marchand has taken centre stage in the first week.

On Sunday night, backed by a raucous atmosphere in the swimming venue in the Parisian business district, Marchand crushed the opposition – including luckless fourth-place finisher Max Litchfield of Yorkshire – to win the 400m individual medley.

And then on Wednesday night, the 22-year-old from Toulouse went for two more gold medals.

He got the first in the second race of the night, continuing a theme of comebacks on day five epitomised by Britain’s Alex Yee in the triathlon and Leeds’s Georgie Brayshaw and the women’s quad sculls crew in the rowing.

Marchand trailed Hungary’s reigning champion Kristof Milak for the first 150 metres of the 200m butterfly but then executed a sensational final turn, staying underwater longer than his rival to emerge barely an arm’s length behind.

Willed on by a crowd of vociferous and passionate partisan French supporters, Marchand stormed to victory, touching the line first in a new Olympic record time of 1m51.21s.

The rendition of La Marseillaise at the medal ceremony was spine-tingling.

Less than two hours later, Marchand returned to thrill this capacity crowd once more, adding a third gold medal, this time in the 200m breaststroke to further cement his status as the French darling of the Paris Olympics with his third gold medal.

Another great star of the pool, American Katie Ledecky won another 1,500m title in an Olympic record time of 15m30.02s, stretching her record of gold medal performances at an Olympics to a historic four, from London to Paris via Rio and Tokyo.