Duncan Scott

Matt Richards’ journey to Olympic stardom began on a family holiday in Tenerife.

A five-year-old Richards saw no reason why he should wear armbands when older kids didn’t, so tore them off and jumped into the deep end of the hotel pool.

“My parents both had a heart attack,” Richards remembers. “My Dad (Simon) ran in and jumped in after me but I was fine and I loved it and that was where I found I had a real love for the water.”

On returning home, Simon and Matt’s mum Amanda took him straight to swimming lessons at Droitwich Leisure Centre and he soon enrolled in the Droitwich Dolphins Swimming Club, later to join Worcester Swimming Club.

Fast forward just over a decade and the rest is Olympic history in the making.

Richards is the rising star of British swimming, heading to Paris 2024 as a world champion and in search of an unprecedented medal haul.

The motivation remains the same as that boiling hot summer’s day in the Canary Islands: a lifelong love of being in the water and pushing his limits.

“Fundamentally, I’m just really excited to race,” says Richards, who tried rugby and taekwondo before settling on the sport of swimming.

“That’s what drives me and pushes me every day.

“The outcomes that come with that can be special, incredible moments but the reason why I do what I do is because I love it.

“I’m just doing what I enjoy and any pressure that comes with that, comes from doing a good job of doing what I love. I have to pinch myself sometimes that the National Lottery funding means I can focus on this all day, every day.”

Richards was born in the West Midlands and currently lives near Bath, with a training base at Millfield School, but is registered as a Welsh swimmer through his Cardiff-born father.

“I’m extremely proud to represent Wales,” he says. “It’s something I dreamt of when I was a little boy. When I was seven or eight years old watching the national rugby team, the sense of pride was on another level.”

Dad Simon has always been Matt’s biggest fan and advocate and he unwittingly played a role in his son’s sporting development at London 2012. A police officer, Simon was deployed at the Olympic sites in Stratford.

“I was very young, I didn’t actually get to go and watch any events in person,” recalls Richards. “We didn’t manage to get any tickets!

“When Dad came home after being there the whole time, we’d been watching it on TV, he’d tell us all about how amazing it was and the incredible sights and sounds of the Olympics.

“The Olympic torch also came through the town I grew up in so all of these small things were really inspirational.”

Richards went to his first Olympics in Tokyo as a wide-eyed teenager, winning Olympic relay gold at the first attempt and unable to resist giggling at an infamous Claire Balding innuendo.

After reaching the pinnacle of his sport in 2021, he hit rock bottom a year later, finishing 30th at the World Championships.

“I was going so far backwards, my times were dreadful compared to where they were before,” said “It was really tough, really hard.

“I didn’t really understand what was going on. I needed a big step back, to reinvent myself and work out why I was no longer at my best.

“It took some hard conversations with the people around me and my loved ones to figure all of that out.”

Richards decided to switch training bases, now working under Ryan Livingstone at Millfield School. Within a year, he rose from 30th to be crowned world champion in the 200m freestyle.

“I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing,” said Richards. “I didn’t enjoy the kind of training I was doing. It didn’t work, I was going through the motions in a style of training I didn’t like.

“It made me fall out of love with the sport at the time. I swim best when I’m happy and enjoying what I’m doing and I needed to find a way to do that.

“I think that whole period stands me in good stead for the future. To be able to learn from that year, understand where it went wrong and get back on the horse, it’s so valuable. I wouldn’t change that year for the world, I’d keep the lessons I learned from it.” Richards has been a beneficiary of the £143.6 million invested into British Aquatics since the National Lottery started funding the sport in 1997. 

Now he heads to Paris engaged to be married to fellow GB swimmer Emily Large and a fully-fledged freestyle powerhouse, the fastest man in the world this year over 200 metres.

Having hit qualifying standards in six events, Richards could race 15 times in nine days in pursuit of a glut of gold at the Games.

He says: “People are always going to have expectations but I know I’m in a good place physically and mentally and I can go and do some amazing things.”

With now six Olympic medals in the pool, it's clear Scott made the right choice to stick to swimming, with his incredible feats in Tokyo now ranking him alongside Team GB legends.

But it was only after the his final race in Japan when the history-making achievements clicked and Scott was able to look back on his achievements in awe.

Realising that amongst the names of Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Steve Redgrave, only Scott has won four medals in one Olympiad.

He added: “Team GB have been so successful since the Lottery money came in, so many medals have been won. After the media of my last race I did think, out of all the great athletes that have come out of Team GB, the people I grew up supporting and loved from Chris Hoy to Redgrave to Murray, I'm the one sitting here with the most medals from a single Games.

"It was a realisation that it was something quite special I was able to achieve there."

Scott qualified for his third Games at the 2024 Aquatics GB Swimming Championships in early April, cementing his opportunity to chase for more silverware in Paris, including the men's 200m freestyle.

With the defending Olympic champion Tom Dean, 2024 world champion Matt Richards, 2015 world champion James Guy and a plethora of other Olympians in the final, the stage was set for one of the greatest domestic races in British swimming history.

And Scott, who won silver in the event at Tokyo 2020, touched the wall second behind Richards to qualify for the individual event once more in Paris, letting out a roar of emotion following a difficult 2023 that saw a dip in form question his place in the pool.

"There was a let out of emotion from how poorly I swam last year and missing out on World Championships," he said.

"Last year I was in and out of the pool a lot with illness and the inconsistency had caught up on me.

"Trials in 2023, it was a difficult drive up from Sheffield back home that Sunday night.

"There was plenty going through my head and that's when the thoughts of 'I'm getting older' creep in.

"But I've kept receipts of what people have said and who's written me off.

"I've labelled them and I can look at them when I need to as external motivating factors that drive me.

"Whatever pressure other people put on me, my own expectations far exceed that."

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