Relay swimmers round off with silver as Duncan Scott breaks Games record

Swimming 01 Aug 21

Team GB’s swimmers closed out their best-ever Olympics with 4x100m medley relay silver as Duncan Scott won a record-breaking fourth medal at Tokyo 2020.

The team of Luke Greenbank, Adam Peaty, James Guy and Scott broke the European record on their way to silver, with only the USA, in a world record, in front of them.

It caps a spectacular Games at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre for the GB swimmers, who will leave with four gold medals and eight medals in all.

That tops the previous best return from 1908, matching the four golds won in London, but topping the seven medals from those Games.

Scott, who brought the team home, becomes the first athlete in any sport to ever win four medals at a single Games for Team GB.

He won gold in the 4x200m freestyle relay, as well as three further silver medals, to take his total medal haul to six having also won two silvers at Rio 2016.

“I’m very fortunate to be part of some excellent relay teams, this being one of them," said Scott. "Initially, we were very disappointed but since 2015, when we first started coming together, we’ve got back-to-back Olympic silvers in this event and we’d have taken that all day.

“Looking at the splits, we all swam well. I’m slightly disappointed with mine but it’s been a tough week and we have to be happy with that.”

Peaty, meanwhile, produced a blistering split of 56.53 on the breaststroke, taking GB from seventh to first in his leg alone as he adds a silver to the gold medals won in the 100m breaststroke and the mixed medley relay.

He said: “I laid it all down, I knew I had to go in an extremely fast time and that was an extremely fast time. Unfortunately we didn’t do quite enough to get that gold but with the success we’ve had, sometimes you need a little bit of pain.

“People back home will say it’s Olympic silver and it shouldn’t be painful but that’s the standard we’re at now. We’re not looking at bronze, we’re not looking at silver, we’re looking at gold and that’s just the mindset.

“We were close to the world record and you can’t ask for more. It’s my fifth medal in two Olympics, I’m happy”

While they were not able to hang on in the second half of the race, it was a second successive silver medal in this event and took Britain’s tally in the relays at the swimming to three, another measure of the strength in depth of the squad.

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