With the Olympics done and dusted for another four years, these are some of the key numbers that describe the British performance in Paris.
96 – the number of British swimmers to win an Olympic medal after Paris. Or is it 97? before the games started w speculated on who would be the 94th GB swimmer to win an Olympic medal, with 93 already in the books. Then the strange case of Fred Lane came to light. An Australian living in Blackpool, Lane won 2 golds in the 1900 games in the 200m freestyle and the 200m obstacle race. Now most parties attribute those medals to Australia, but the IOC insists that they should be classified as having been won by Britain since Lane was entered for the Games by the English Amateur Swimming Association. That seems a little unfair on our Antipodean cousins and it seems only right that they keep Lane’s medals. So who was 94th? Well the first two new medallists were Jack McMillan and Kieran Bird, with Ben Proud also joining the group – since Jack swam first in the 4×200 heats, we’ll give him number 94.
5 the number of medals won in Paris and the number that makes the headlines. That ranks Paris as the 6th best Olympics by total medals, behind 2020, 2016, 2008, 1908 and 1900 (even ignoring Fred Lane) and the 8th best when ranked by gold, silver and bronze. It could so easily have been better on both counts though…see below.
87 – the total number of Olympic medals won by British swimmers in the pool and open water since 1896. For the same reasons as above some places will add in Fred Lane’s 2 medals and show this as 89.
1 British record set in Paris, courtesy of Max Litchfield in the 400 individual medley.
28% the proportion of season’s best performances – the GB hierarchy would usually be looking for this figure to be above 60% for the targeted meet of the year, so it fell a bit shy. However given all the debate about the slow pool, maybe this isn’t the best measure…
66% the proportion of events which improved on the seeding entering the meet. Since everyone was swimming in the same pool this feels like it might be a fairer metric and GB’s swimmers look to have generally performed better than their peers.
2 all time best relay splits from the GB teams courtesy of Ollie Morgan over 100m backstroke and Angharad Evans for 100m breaststroke.
8 Duncan Scott’s career medal haul. The flying Scotsman is now equal second on the all time GB rankings across all sports for medals won, and top for British swimmers.
0.09 – the total number of seconds that separated the silvers won by Adam Peaty, Matt Richards and Ben Proud from Gold
1 the total number of seconds that separated 4th places for Max Litchfield, Duncan Scott and Freya Colbert from the podium
The last two numbers really sum up the 2024 Games from a swimming perspective – it was a decent return but it was so close to being a great one. But those fine margins are the nature of elite sport.