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The best display by a British Olympic swimming team came in a 100m outdoor pool on an athletics field in London.
Henry Taylor, a cotton mill worker who trained in a canal, was the home hero then, claiming three of his country’s four golds at the White City Stadium in a swimsuit made of hand-woven silk.
Since then, 113 years and 24 Olympics have passed and Team GB have never been able to match the seven swimming medals won at London 1908, their best effort being the six they secured at Rio 2016.
Team GB are looking to break their all-time Olympic medal haul record fro 1980 this summer
Team GB swimming chiefs say recent years have been the most successful in British history
But according to the boss of the British team in Tokyo, that 113-year-old record could finally be broken at the newly-built but empty Aquatics Centre, where the ultra-professional Adam Peaty is expected to take on amateur Taylor’s starring role.
‘In 1908, there was no female swimming and it was a 100m pool stuck in the middle of athletics, so I don’t think we can really compare 1908 to now,’ laughs British Swimming performance