[ Photo Courtesy: Mike Lewis / ISL ]
From Olympics to ISL, British Star Duncan Scott Has Been Consistently Excellent BY DAVID RIEDER
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omehow, Duncan Scott is still underrated. The 24-yearold from Alloa, Scotland, made his first Olympic final at age 19 and then spent the next five years entrenching himself as an individual medal contender on the global stage and a key contributor to gold-medal contending British relays. At first, he had some trouble swimming his best races in individual finals, but he broke through with a bronze medal in the 200 free at the 2019 Worlds, and most memorably, he anchored Britain’s 400 medley relay to gold at the 2019 World Championships by providing a 46.14 split, the secondquickest in history, to storm past American Nathan Adrian.
the Americans on the medley relay, but he secured another silver for Great Britain.
At this summer’s Tokyo Olympics, Scott was, by all accounts, brilliant. He swam a 1:44.26 to become the seventh-fastest man ever in the 200 freestyle, and three days later, he recorded a 1:55.28 in the 200 IM, where he also jumped to seventh alltime. On Great Britain’s 800 freestyle relay, he dove in to anchor with an advantage and extended it, his 1:43.45 split ending up as the race’s quickest by far and locking down Great Britain’s first Olympic gold medal in a relay since 1908. He didn’t quite have the firepower to again run down
So Scott put together two gold-medal level swims in an Olympic final, only for a surprising swimmer to get to the wall in front of him each time. And it’s not like there is a ton of overlap between the 200 free and 200 IM, with Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte the only others in recent decades to excel in both. But without an individual gold to complete his steady ascencion to the pinnacle of swimming, Scott was never going to get quite the credit he deserves.
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The only knock was that Scott finished without an individual gold. Despite Scott’s furious final 50 in the 200 free final (26.46), British compatriot Tom Dean still managed to sneak past him at the finish and steal away gold. In the 200 IM final, surprising Chinese swimmer Wang Shun was just a smidge better coming home, even as Scott moved up from fifth and picked off his competitors down the stretch on his way to a silver medal.
