Team Great Britain have come through and managed to have secured their first ever one-two finish in an Olympic swimming event for 113 years, with Tom Dean beating Tokyo flat-mate Duncan Scott to gold by 0.04 sec in a dramatic finale to the men’s 200m freestyle. After the excitement of Magic Monday, the gold rush continued early on Tuesday morning with the swimmers adding their second gold medal of the Games to take Team GB’s tally to four after only four days of Olympic competition. It makes it the best ever start to a summer Olympics.
Dean had twice contracted Covid-19 over the past year, including a “very severe” infection in January, and the 21-year-old’s extraordinary victory also makes him the first British man to win an individual freestyle swimming event since Henry Taylor at the London Olympics way back in 1908. The last male freestyler to win a medal of any kind had been David Davies with his 1,500m bronze in 2004 but, having turned well behind South Korea’s Sunwoo Hwang, who had reached 100m at world-record pace, the two Britons powered through in the last 50m to clinch a shock gold-silver finish.
Dean and Scott both set personal bests in the process, with the University of Bath mechanical engineering student now joining swimming legends Mark Spitz, Ian Thorpe and Michael Phelps in the list of 200m freestyle champions. He finished in 1min 44.22 sec to also surpass Scott’s national record.
Brazil’s Fernando Scheffer came through for third, within half a second of the two Britons, while Hwang paid for his blistering start and faltered badly down the final length to finish more than a second behind in seventh.
The tension, the gathering…
