'After every race I was thinking: I'm falling short of all my targets'

After his record four-medal haulin Tokyo, Duncan Scott knows he faces stacked’ opposition to be best in Paris

- Andy Bull

Duncan Scott is a hard D man to catch, in the pool and out. During the Tokyo Olympics the British press spent a lot of time trying, and failing, to get a word with him as he peeled off nine races in eight days. There were three rounds in the 200m freestyle, three more in the 200m medley, two in the men's 4x100m medley relay, and another in the 4x200m freestyle relay. By the end of the week, Scott had won more medals than any British athlete at a single Games one gold and three silver - but had barely said a word in public because he was so busy racing, sleeping, losing, winning.

It was the same at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. On the Gold Coast he swam 11 races in five days and won six medals. In Birmingham in 2022 it was 12 in five, and he won six more. It's not unusual for swimmers to enter multiple races at major championships, but the job Scott takes on is something else. His teammate Adam Peaty called him an "inspiration" in Tokyo, and it's undeniably true there is something heartening about watching him go about his swimming. He has an abundant love of what he does, but apparently no interest in the trappings that go with it.

"Sadly it all kind of came back to haunt me at the end," says Scott, who is working as an ambassador for Aldi, official partner of Team GB & ParalympicsGB. "When I finished my last race in Tokyo I had to do eight hours of media back-to-back-to-back, which was kind of raw." Everyone wanted a piece of him, but by then Scott was so exhausted that he wasn't able to say much more about his achievement than it "hadn't really sunk in". If anything, his feelings seemed more bitter than sweet. Those three silver medals, seemed, by his way of thinking, only to mean that he had endured three defeats.