Duncan Scott wins Olympic silver in men's 200m medley as the Team GB star becomes Scotland's greatest-ever Olympian with eighth medal - while Leon Marchand collects fourth gold in Paris

If anyone was going to challenge the man who has become half-dolphin, half-torpedo for France, then it was Duncan Scott.

The unassuming 27-year-old has certainly never known acclaim of the kind that Leon Marchand has come to know. He’s never found an arena frantic to see him win, or an entire city hanging on his race, bringing life to a virtual while he swims. The Scot is appreciated in his native Glasgow. But not that much.

He arrived here fuelled by inspiration. He was jet-propelled by the memory of having swum to gold with the British 4x200 metre relay team, 48 hours earlier. 

He became the third most decorated British Olympian of all time in the process and had his compatriot, Andy Murray, in the building for moral support as he went head-to head with Marchand in the Olympic 200m individual medley final.

They even delayed the start of the 400m heats in the decathlon at the Stade de France for Marchand to compete for a fourth gold and that stadium went wild, with its renditions of ‘Allez les Bleus’, as pictures of the race were beamed into the stadium screens.

Scott was implacable. He swam like many have never seen him before. He’s known as a world class freestyle swimmer, yet could not wait for that stage of this race before taking the chase to Marchand. ‘I really had to put myself in a good position at 150 metres,’ he said when it as all over. ‘I couldn't just rely on my quality freestyle. I had to challenge myself.’

Challenge Marchand he did - making up ground on the backstroke leg which he had lost in the butterfly. The red Scott swim cap began to encroach slightly on the Marchand blue. ‘I'd like to think I went head-to-head with Leon for a little bit of the race,’ Scott reflected.

But then came the Marchand breaststroke, and that familiar incantatory chant of ‘Allez’ every time his head surfaces from the water. Scott maintained his pursuit at a pace which saw him finish in the second fastest time he has ever recorded across 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 a third Olympic record to add to the two he set inside two hours in his finals on Wednesday night – and a finishing time one tenth of a second faster than Michael Phelps’ best. It’s now four individual golds in six days, equalling Phelps’ performance in the 2004 Athens Olympics. Only the American, by winning five individual titles in Beijing in 2008, has done better than him.

When Marchand sat down to speak at the end of it all, we witnessed a boyish innocence as he described, in the American English he has picked up during his time at Arizona State University, the thrill of receiving messages from Phelps on Wednesday night. He spoke of the work he has been doing on relaxation to help him cope with the spotlight at these Games. ‘I’ve been practising for that and I think I did really well, but I’m not used to that,’ he said.

Scott provided his post-match discussion early and didn’t appear at the press conference. His silver takes him ahead of Sir Chris Hoy to become Britain’s joint second most decorated Olympian, with Sir Bradley Wiggins. Since 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 an impediment to that.

Scott wasn’t the only Briton swimming in the face of a French maelstrom. Ben Proud, in the 50 metre freestyle, faced the Frenchman Flourent Manaudou, who had spent the minutes before the race whipping the crowd into a frenzy.

For Proud, an introspective, intense and most humble member of the British team, the Olympic Games have been a kind of a haunting as he has tried to scale their peak for years. Fourth in Rio, eight years ago, Fifth in Tokyo. The pursuit of an Olympic medal had become so agonising that Proud had started to fall out of love with swimming and thought of packing it in.

It wasn’t the medal he would have ideally wanted but he was rewarded for his persistence and fortitude by edging out Manaudou to clinch silver in the pursuit which defines the fastest swimmer on earth. His time of 21.30 was five hundredths of a second slower than Australian Cameron McEvoy.

Marchand could still add two medals to his Parisian collection, since he will compete in the final of the 4x100m mixed medley relay this evening and, if the French quartet qualifies, in the 4x100m medley on Sunday. The prospect of Adam Peaty appearing in the British mixed 4×100 team remains a possibility, despite him missing the heats which saw the British team qualify fifth fastest for the final.

But for this night at least, there was only talk of Marchand and another mesmerising performance. ‘His breaststroke’s world class,’ Scott said of him at the end of it all. ‘His turns are phenomenal. His underwater is unbelievable.’ And when the dust settles, he will have to work out how he can possibly compete with all that.