It is a measure of how far British swimming has come that Duncan Scott laid his head on the starting block and did not lift it for a considerable time, after securing silver in the 200metres individual medley on Friday.
He had just completed the four lengths faster than any Briton in history and equalled the British record of three medals at a single Olympics in the process.
He is likely to overtake Sir Chris Hoy, Sir Bradley Wiggins, Max Whitlock and Jason Kenny and 1908 swimmer Henry Taylor by taking a fourth piece of metal in Sunday’s 4x100m medley relay final.
Duncan Scott of deservedly celebrates silver after the Men's 200m Individual Medley Final
The understated Team GB hero was bereft to have been beaten by an agonisingly tiny margin
But Britain’s swimmers have reached the level where Scott’s defeat by Chinese Shun Wang, whom he was closing in on at the finish, is a source of personal devastation.
In the space of four days, 24-year-old Scott has been pipped to the wall by margins of 0.04sec and 0.28sec, with his friend and Olympic Village roommate Tom Dean edging him out by the finer of those margins in Tuesday’s 200m freestyle.
This is all a very long way from the Troon pool, in South Ayrshire, where his father taught him and his sister how to float on their backs and by the time Scott sat down to talk about the race he had managed to put some perspective on that silver. The fact that Michael Phelps had won this race in the last four Olympics and that four of those on the starting blocks beside him were among the 10 fastest that the discipline has known.
Scott was even able to gently take the rise out of someone who could not immediately recite the name of Reginald Doherty — a tennis player at the 1900 Games — as the sixth member of the select group who have also taken three medals from a single Olympiad.
Now the superstar could join an elite list to have taken the most medals at a single Olympiad
He claimed not to have known about this medals record business before a few journalists had mentioned it. But he did shed some light on the reasons why British swimming has exploded with success this week: six medals, including a first relay gold in 113 years.
Fundamental to it all, of course, is Adam Peaty — figurehead, leader and talisman — who has helped Britain’s elite swimmers to keep things together during the long months of lockdown.
‘He’s just been himself, that’s what he did during
