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Duncan Scott claimed his eighth Olympic medal but was powerless to resist French poster boy Leon Marchand while Ben Proud got his hands on the one piece of silverware missing from his collection.
Having equalled Sir Chris Hoy’s medal tally earlier this week, Scott moved out on his own as Scotland’s most decorated Olympian by bagging silver in the men’s 200 metres individual medley final.
Scott is still searching for the individual gold that has eluded him in his career but he could equal or even overtake Sir Jason Kenny’s Team GB record of nine medals in the relay events this weekend.
But 27-year-old Scott once again shied away from comparisons with the cycling duo, insisting Kenny’s seven golds and Hoy’s half-dozen put them in a different league of sporting success as he has just two.
“I’ll chop my hand off for any relay (medal), no matter what it is, when it is or what leg it is,” Scott said with a smile. “At the same time, I’m in a totally different bracket to these guys.
“They’ve come into Olympics and absolutely dominated – Sir Jason Kenny, Sir Chris Hoy and others. Don’t put me in a comparison to these guys.
“I really don’t want to be put together with these athletes because they’ve won gold after gold after gold and I’m scraping silvers and jumping on the backs of others in relays.”
While Scott clawed back some ground on his favoured freestyle leg in the last 50m, Marchand’s proficiency in the butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke carried him into an unassailable lead.
With French President Emmanuel Macron among those cheering on in another cacophonous atmosphere at La Defense Arena, 22-year-old Marchand powered to his fourth individual gold of Paris 2024, winning by 1.25 seconds.
“I really had to put myself in a good position at 150m, I couldn’t just rely on quality freestyle, I had to challenge myself,” Scott added. “At this level, you can’t swim over people all the time.
“I liked the head-to-head with Leon for a little bit of the race but he’s the best 200m breaststroker in the world, the best 200 fly swimmer in the world, the best 400 IM swimmer in the world, the best 200 IM swimmer in the world.
“That’s the second quickest I’ve ever gone, so I’m really happy with that.”
While Proud has won world, European and Commonwealth titles in his career, a couple of near misses in the 50m freestyle final at the Olympics left him at his lowest point just a couple of years ago.
Fourth at Rio 2016 and joint fifth at Tokyo 2020, Proud was finally on the podium in the French capital as he scooped silver – although he finished just 0.05 secs off Australia’s Cameron McEvoy.
“Around three years ago was when I burst into tears, I just couldn’t take the fact I failed in my race in Tokyo,” the 29-year-old said.
“But if I hadn’t gone through that I wouldn’t have experienced these past three years which have been the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.
“Back in ’22, hitting what I would say is my rock-bottom and having to crack on and deal with it has led to me finding a very great balance for my swimming and lifestyle.
“This time around, I definitely feel like I did what I wanted to do. I might look back and see things I could have changed but in reality, that was probably the best swim I’ve done in a championship final.”
Katie Shanahan finished fifth in the women’s 200m backstroke final, with Team GB team-mate Honey Osrin seventh as Australia’s Kaylee McKeown took home the gold medal in an Olympic record time.
