Team GB win GOLD in men's 4x200m freestyle relay as world best quartet successfully defend their Olympic title in Paris

They arrived with the weight of this city and this extraordinary, wild arena on their shoulders. Four young British swimmers being asked to rescue what was starting to become a struggle in the pool for Team GB at these Games, with the host nation in the lane to one side of them and the USA to the other.

James Guy, Tom Dean, Matt Richards and Duncan Scott knew what gold in the 4x200metre relay felt and weighed like. They’d had it hanging around their necks in Tokyo three years ago. But this was the place which echoes to the sound of La Marseillaise and Allez les Blues – and for the briefest time last night, the bid to regain the gold medal this quartet had won seemed to be in jeopardy. A brief time. The very briefest of times.

The Germans, the Americans and the Australians were offered some hope as they erased the early British lead and nudged ahead of Tom Dean, the British record holder, who swam second.

Noone need have doubted Dean, the man who had moved heaven earth and even moved clubs to maintain the level required to hit the same level here. He had been pacing himself across the four lengths, swimming a stage of tactical perfection which saw GB retake a lead which expanded. 

A marginal lead, turned into a 0.5m lead and a 1.75m lead until we were left with the sight of the red swim cap of Duncan Scott, driving further and further into a lead which was full body’s length as reached the final length.

It was as emphatic a win as we had witnessed in Tokyo three years ago. A win by a margin of 1.35 seconds from the USA, the only quartet remotely in contention. Had France been able to deploy Leon Marchand, the machine who had just power to the 200m breaststroke final as the relay teams prepared to enter, then it might have been a slightly different story. But the man who swims to the guttural roars of ‘Leon’ could not have changed this.

The medal restores Scott to his place as the most decorated British Olympian swimmer of all time with seven, and to the joint third most decorated British Olympian, alongside Sir Chris Hoy. Modest, unassuming Scott, ahead of Max Whitlock, Charlotte Dujardin, Adam Peaty and Sir Steve Redgrave for medals won.

They have returned to the prosaic realities which come with belonging to a four-man Olympics team for which it was raining medals, three years ago. The high-altitude training, the endless repetitions, the Q&As with the swimming social media teams, discussing most irritating habits and favourite pools.

But nothing has come close to the experience of the night in Tokyo when, to quote Tom Dean, a bunch of British swimmers stood on the podium with their mates, wearing gold medals that had not been claimed by a British 4 x 200m freestyle relay team for 113 years.

They snatched the USA’s world record that night, as Dean and serial Olympic medallist Duncan Scott assumed the place which Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte had commanded in a period of continuous dominance in this signature event. 

The manner of victory at the Tokyo Aquatic Centre was such that the experienced James Guy, another of that team, who swam the second leg, was blubbering even before anchorman Scott completed his fourth leg.

When they conduct interviews now, they do so as MBEs – an additional award for ending a wait for this particular 556g gong which goes back so long that Johnny Weissmuller and Duke Kahanamoku had contributed to the drought. But the experience was so rich that they have desperately wanted it again. It had been 1,098 days, though it felt only like yesterday.

The optimism was fuelled by Matt Richards – back then, an 18-year-old who had only just made his senior international debut at the European Championship. His performance in the individual 200m freestyle here on Monday night – powering up the field to miss out on gold by a fingertip to Romanian David Popovici while swimming in lane one – was proof of his physical strength. 

Richards has come from youthful ingenue to self-critical professional challenging his training regime - swapping the high performance training centre at the University of Bath for Millfield, in a concerted effort to ensure that he did not stall.

It was not an auspicious start to this night for Richards, who failed to reach the final of the 100m freestyle after finishing sixth in his semi-final. It was Ireland celebrating a first gold at the Games, with a win for Daniel Wiffen in the 800m freestyle. 

For Team GB, you might say he was one that got away. Wiffen was born in Leeds, trains with Adam Peaty at Loughborough and represents Northern Ireland in the Commonwealth Games.

It was the same quartet that swam three years ago, the only difference being Guy leading off from Tom Dean, the British record holder leading off from fastest Briton, reverse formation from 2021