If anyone were to challenge the man who has become half dolphin, half torpedo for France, it would be Duncan Scott.
The unassuming 27-year-old has certainly never known the kind of accolades that Leon Marchand has. He has never seen an arena panic to see him win, or an entire city hang on to his race and breathe virtual life into it as he swims. The Scot is appreciated in his hometown of Glasgow. But not so much.
He arrived there full of inspiration, propelled like a jet-drive by the memory of swimming to gold with the British 4x200m relay team 48 hours earlier.
He became the third most decorated British Olympian of all time and received moral support from fellow countryman Andy Murray when he took on Marchand in the Olympic 200m medley final.
They even postponed the start of the 400m heats of the decathlon at the Stade de France so that Marchand could compete for a fourth gold medal. The stadium went wild with renditions of ‘Allez les Bleus’ as images of the race were shown on the stadium’s screens.
Team GB’s Duncan Scott has added another Olympic medal to his stunning collection after winning silver in the men’s 200m individual medley final
Scott took an eighth Olympic medal, becoming the highest-ever Scottish Olympian
Scott was relentless. He swam like many had never seen him before. He is known as a world-class freestyle swimmer, but he couldn’t wait for that stage of the race before he could start chasing Marchand. “I really had to get myself in a good position at 150 meters,” he said when it was all over. “I couldn’t just rely on my freestyle quality. I had to challenge myself.”
He challenged Marchand—he was making up ground in the backstroke that he had lost in the butterfly. The red Scott cap was starting to look a little different from the blue Marchand. “I think I was fighting Leon head-to-head for a little bit of the race,” Scott mused.
But then came the Marchand breaststroke, and that familiar incantatory chant of “Allez” every time his head breaks the surface. Scott continued his pursuit at a pace that gave him the second fastest time he had ever recorded over the distance. Yet Marchand still won by a country mile.
In the presence of President Emmanuel Macron, he struck gold with a time of 1:54.06. It was his third Olympic record, adding to the two he set in two hours in his final on Wednesday night – and a finishing time that was a tenth of a second faster than Michael Phelps’ best time. It now stands at four individual gold medals in six days, equaling Phelps’s feat at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Only the American has done better, winning five individual titles in Beijing in 2008.
When Marchand sat down to speak at the end of the evening, we witnessed a boyish innocence as he described, in the American English he picked up during his time at Arizona State University, the thrill of receiving texts from Phelps on Wednesday night. He spoke of the work he has done on relaxation to help him cope with the spotlight of these Games. “I’ve been training for this and I think I’ve done really well, but I’m not used to it,” he said.
Scott gave his post-match discussion early and did not appear at the press conference. His silver moves him ahead of Sir Chris Hoy to become Britain’s second most decorated Olympian, along with Sir Bradley Wiggins. Given that only Sir Jason Kenny has more, it would be fair to say that Scott is the most underrated British Olympian of all time. But none of his three individual medals are gold, and Marchand will always be a hindrance to that.
Scott wasn’t the only Briton swimming into the face of a French maelstrom. Ben Proud, in the 50m freestyle, faced Frenchman Flourent Manaudou, who had sent the crowd into a frenzy in the minutes leading up to the race.
Frenchman Leon Marchand won his fourth consecutive gold medal at the Games
For Proud, an introspective, intense and deeply modest member of the British team, the Olympics have been something of a spectre as he has spent years trying to reach their peak. Fourth in Rio eight years ago, fifth in Tokyo. The pursuit of an Olympic medal had become so painful that Proud began to lose his love of swimming and considered quitting.
It wasn’t the medal he ideally wanted, but he was rewarded for his determination and perseverance by beating Manaudou to take silver in the pursuit that defines the fastest swimmer in the world. His time of 21.30 was five hundredths of a second slower than that of Australia’s Cameron McEvoy.
Marchand could add two more medals to his Paris collection, as he will compete in the final of the 4x100m mixed medley relay tonight and, if the French quartet qualify, in the 4x100m medley on Sunday. The prospect of Adam Peaty making the British mixed 4×100 team remains a possibility, despite missing the heats in which the British team qualified fifth fastest for the final.
But for tonight, at least, it was all about Marchand and another mesmerizing performance. “His breaststroke is world class,” Scott said of him at the end of the set. “His turns are phenomenal. His underwater is incredible.” And when the dust settles, he’ll have to figure out how he can ever compete with that.