NANTERRE, France — Turns out, those comparisons to Michael Phelps weren't farfetched at all when it comes to Léon Marchand.

They certainly weren't a burden for the 22-year-old Frenchman.

Marchand completed one of the most audacious doubles in swimming history Wednesday night, winning the 200-meter butterfly and the 200 breaststroke about two hours apart in front a home crowd cheering his every stroke.

Two grueling races. Two very different strokes. Two Olympic records. Two gold medals.

Take that, Phelps, who did several doubles of his own while claiming a record eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“I really enjoyed every moment of those two finals,” Marchand said. “It was really amazing for, for me to swim. Those was really good opponents too. The (200) fly was crazy for me. I'm really proud of everything.”

Thrilling the French fans and claiming the spotlight even on a night when Katie Ledecky romped to another gold medal, Marchand notched his second and third victories at La Defense Arena and stamped himself — with the Olympics not even a week old — as one of the faces of the Games.

After rallying to beat world-record holder and defending Olympic champion Kristóf Milák in the 200 fly with a finishing kick for the ages, Marchand made it look easy in the 200 breast.

He led all the way, touching in 2 minutes, 5.85 seconds as more than 15,000 fans — many of them holding up cardboard cutouts of his smiling face — nearly blew the roof off La Defense Arena.

“Léon! Léon! Léon!” they screamed, a chant that was sure to carry on through the night in Paris.

Katie Ledecky gritted her teeth and flexed her left arm atop the lane rope.

There was plenty of splashing, too, by one of the most accomplished swimmers to ever dive into the pool.

Ledecky dominated the 1,500-meter freestyle at the Paris Games on Wednesday for her eighth Olympic gold medal and 12th medal overall.

And that might not even have been the most impressive performance on a big night in the pool.

There was also a world record in the 100 freestyle as Pan Zhanle of China lowered his own mark.

An ambitious plan to clean up the long-polluted Seine River paid off when the swimming portions of the Paris Olympics triathlons were finally held in the waterway Wednesday.

After a couple of canceled swim practices and a day’s delay because of the river’s water quality, the women’s and men’s events finished in spectacular fashion — on the Pont Alexandre III bridge with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

“It’s magical,” said newly minted gold medalist Cassandre Beaugrand, of France. “It’s the best route we’ve had in a long time, and I know all the other athletes feel the same.”

Beaugrand navigated slippery roads that turned the cycling portion into a series of spills following an early morning rain.

Less than an hour after the women finished, the men’s race featured was plenty of stifling heat and humidity as the sun came out in full force. Alex Yee of Britain used a burst at the end to catch and pass Hayden Wilde of New Zealand to win the gold medal by six seconds.

The U.S. men’s basketball team had an easier time with South Sudan in the rematch than it did when the teams first met a couple of weeks ago. The U.S. clinched a trip to the quarterfinals with a 103-86 victory.

A spinal injury ended Adriana Ruano’s Olympic dream as a gymnast. She came back as a shooter and won Guatemala’s first Olympic gold medal.

Ruano was training for the 2011 world championships in gymnastics, a qualifier for the London Olympics the following year, when she felt pain in her back.

An MRI showed the then-16-year-old had six damaged vertebrae — a career-ending injury — and Ruano’s doctor recommended she take up shooting if she wanted to stay in sports without aggravating her injured back.

That advice paid off Wednesday as Ruano won gold in the women’s trap with an Olympic-record score of 45 out of 50.

Novak Djokovic is three wins away from earning the only big title he lacks.

Djokovic, 37, went on a five-game run for a 7-5, 6-3 victory over Dominik Koepfer of Germany, reaching the Olympic singles quarterfinals, against Stefanos Tsitsipas, for the fourth time.

A gold medal is pretty much the only accomplishment of significance missing from the resume of Djokovic, who has won a men’s-record 24 Grand Slam titles and spent more weeks at No. 1 than anyone in the history of the computerized tennis rankings.

Rafael Nadal’s Paris Games ended when he and Carlos Alcaraz were eliminated in the men’s doubles quarterfinals with a 6-2, 6-4 loss to the fourth-seeded American duo of Austin Krajicek and Rajeev Ram.