Scott secures seventh medal as Team GB win freestyle crown

British quartet successfully defend 4x200m relay title to clinch GB's first gold in pool

- Andy Bull

As it was in Tokyo, so it goes again in Paris. The Great Britain quartet of James Guy, Tom Dean, Matt Richards and Duncan Scott defended their Olympic 4x200m freestyle relay title, and won Team GB's first gold medal of the swimming competition at these Games. They beat both the USA and Australia, and did it with more than a second to spare.

The victory means Scott has won his seventh Olympic medal, which raises him right up alongside Chris Hoy in third place on the list of the country's most decorated Olympic athletes. He will be especially glad this one was gold. He already has five silver medals, which he will tell you is more than enough.

It means only Bradley Wiggins and Jason Kenny have more medals than Scott, albeit there are a fair few athletes who have won more than his two gold medals. Still, he has a couple more chances to do something about that in just the next four days when he competes in the 200m individual medley and then the medley relay.

The four finished in a time of 6min 59.43sec, which was a second or so off the European record they set in Tokyo. Scott's time, 1min 43.95sec, was the quickest split anyone turned in across all 32 competing swimmers.