Duncan Scott’s end-of-season break was deservedly relaxing but it’s not taken Scotland’s most successful swimmer long to lock back into training mode.
Scott’s motivation to return to the pool is as a result of 2025 being another hugely successful year.
Having become Scotland’s most-decorated Olympian last year by winning gold and silver at Paris 2024, Scott added another gold to his collection earlier this year - this time in the 4x200m freestyle at the World Championships.
And so a holiday, and plenty of time out the pool, was more than justified for Scott.
“I went to Vietnam and then Italy so it was a pretty nice few weeks,” he says.
“I'm not good at being totally sedentary for a few weeks so I still like doing things. I played quite a bit of paddle and played plenty of golf, and I still did bits and bobs in the gym but staying out of the pool environment is always pretty helpful.
“Nutrition-wise, I eat in moderation all through the year so it means in my off-season, I don't go too mad. Although my alcohol intake does go up a little bit during my break.”
Scott has been on the international stage, and winning medals, for over a decade.
Given his longevity, and the success he’s accumulated, most would forgive the swimmer if he was starting to think about slowing down.
But the 28-year-old is considering nothing of the sort.
As he heads into yet another winter of training, Scott is, perhaps surprisingly, as driven now as ever. Despite accumulating nearly 50 major championship medals to date, the Alloa man still has more than a few unfulfilled ambitions.
As a two-time Olympic relay gold medallist, perhaps the most significant remaining goal for Scott is to win an individual Olympic title, to which he’s already come close having won three individual Olympic silver medals.
With the LA Olympics three years away, Scott has quite some time to wait before the opportunity to finally become an individual Olympic champion will be presented to him. This delay hasn’t prevented Scott from keeping this goal at the forefront of his mind, however.
“I'm definitely ready to try and do a few things that I've not done in my career yet - like win an individual Olympic gold medal. There's that feeling of always the bridesmaid never the bride with the Olympic silvers,” he says.
“The reality is this could be my last Olympic cycle but despite being 28, I still feel like I'm mid-20s.
“I feel like I'm competing better than I ever have done and some of the training sessions I'm doing are better than I've ever done before so that gives me that hunger to go out and achieve things that I've not done yet. My belief is as strong as ever - whether that's slightly delusional or not I don't know but I actually think a bit of delusion can be a good thing.”
Scott has trained at the University of Stirling for his entire senior career and it’s a partnership that’s proved to be remarkably fruitful.
Things just may, however, be about go up another level in Stirling, though.
For the past few years, one of Scott’s greatest rivals, and GB relay teammate, has been Tom Dean.
The 25-year-old Englishman is a three-time Olympic champion, and is responsible for one of Scott’s Olympic silver medals having pipped him to the Olympic 200m freestyle title at Tokyo 2020.
Dean recently announced he was relocating from Bath to Stirling and the imminent arrival of Dean is both a major coup for the University, which has long been viewed as one of the most successful swimming training bases in the world, and a significant boost for Scott personally, who is in little doubt that a little friendly rivalry in training between the pair will be of huge benefit to him as he looks towards 2026 where he will, all going to plan, spearhead Scotland’s team at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games.
“Tom and I do literally all the same events 100 and 200 free and the 200 IM but we get on really well,” says Scott.
“You see what he's achieved in his career, and his ceiling in terms of performance is ridiculously high so it’s a big deal that he’s coming to Stirling. It's a very, very good training group we've got at Stirling now and Deano’s arrival will be such a positive.
“Training will be very competitive and 100 percent, I don't want to get beaten. I think every athlete feels like that - if you don't have that hunger and determination then why are you in the sport? So whoever you're training against, it’s really important to have that competitive edge and that's why I love being at Stirling because there's so many guys who are willing to put themselves on the line. And they'll let you know if they beat you, which is really good accountability for myself.”
The arrival of Dean only serves to strengthen the reputation of the University of Stirling as something of a medal factory in swimming terms, and a world class facility across a broad range of sports.
The swimming programme boasts, in addition to Scott and Dean, a slew of other major championship medallists including Katie Shanahan, Kathleen Dawson and Jack McMillan (who also won gold at the 2025 World Championships) but Stirling’s success is not restricted to the swimming pool, with the recent Walker Cup captained by the University’s Head of Golf, Dean Robertson; and Lorna McClymont having recently joined the Ladies European Tour while alumni include Gordon Reid, Catriona Matthew, Richie Ramsay, Ross Murdoch and Shelley Kerr.
