Scott powers home to beat Dean to 200m freestyle gold for Scotland

Who said sequels are never a patch on the original? Over four laps of staggering intensity, the greatest two freestylers in British swimming history, Duncan Scott and Tom Dean, went at it stroke for stroke, eyeball to eyeball, over a humdinger of a Commonwealth Games 200m final. Just like they did at the Olympics last year. Only this time their battle was accompanied by a soundtrack of deafening screams – and came with a startling twist.

In Tokyo these two great friends – one hailing from Scotland, the other from England – slugged it out all the way to the line, with Dean winning by just 0.04 sec. In doing so they became the first British pair to finish on an Olympic swimming podium in more than 100 years in the 200m freestyle.

Most had expected history to repeat itself – especially given that last month Scott had been forced to pull out of the world championships in Budapest because he was struggling with high intensity efforts in training. Instead he judged his race perfectly, watching Dean for the first two laps before moving alongside him on the third and powering away in the final 50m.

“We both love it,” explained Scott, whose winning time was 1min 45.02sec, 0.39 ahead of his friend. “It’s a really positive thing. It’s a nice change being on different sides of the table this time. Scotland versus England. It’s always positive, we’ll rekindle the relationship as we get back to Team GB.”

That message was shared by Dean, who said: “We finished and he just said ‘One-two again’. We said the same at the trials and at the Olympics last year. One-two at an international competition again and we’re going to keep doing that and keep doing that.”

For good measure, Scott – who is Team GB’s most decorated swimmer in Olympic