THE transition from junior to senior athlete is notoriously treacherous but for Duncan Scott, it could not have gone smoother. The 18-year-old already has a Commonwealth Games medal and he will take another significant step in his fledgling career when he represents Great Britain for the first time at the World Championships in Kazan, Russia, this week.

Scott is one of just six Scottish swimmers selected for the British team and while he has only secured a relay spot rather than an individual berth, it is a significant milestone for the teenager and an opportunity that he is relishing.

“I’m really looking forward to the Worlds, it’s my first GB international so I can’t wait to actually race,” he says. “At the start of this season, my coach and I targeted trying to make the team for this meet because I think it’ll give me great experience for the future.”

Scott has already amassed considerable international experience despite being so young but he admits to feeling like “the kid in the team” travelling to Kazan. His silver medal at the Commonwealth Games last summer came in the 4x200m freestyle relay and it was, Scott hopes, just the start.

“It was a great experience to win that medal and it’s given me confidence to move on,” he says. “I’d been aiming for a relay spot at the Commonwealth Games and I’d also targeted a place in the relay team this year for my first international GB team but next year, I don’t want to be doing that, I want to be making the team outright and getting an individual spot for Rio.”

It was at the European Games in Baku in June that Scott really came to the fore. The event doubled as his sport’s European Junior Championships and Scott returned with three gold and three silver medals, making him GB’s most decorated athlete of the Games. “I didn’t for one second think I would come home with as many medals as I did,” he says. “I wasn’t fully tapered for Baku so I just wanted to try to swim well because, being only a month or so before the Worlds, I thought that would give me a good chance to be on form in Kazan. But I’m really happy with how I did out there.”

Scott possesses a charming mixture of youth, humility and confidence. Just how young he is, is brought home when he reports he was on summer holidays from school for Glasgow 2014. He also attributes repeatedly his selection for last year’s Commonwealth Games and this week’s World Championships to luck, giving the impression being picked for international teams is like winning the lottery rather than being merited.

But Scott also shows the self-belief that is a prerequisite for succeeding in elite sport; occasionally, he mentions wanting to be at the top of the British swimming ladder rather than the bottom and one senses that he believes he has what it takes to get there.

On completing school a few months ago, the teenager began training full-time at Stirling University having spent last summer there too. The training group is one of the strongest swimming squads in Britain and includes Commonwealth gold medallist Ross Murdoch, Olympian Craig Benson and Commonwealth medallist, Jak Scott. It is former Commonwealth champion Robbie Renwick, who Scott looks up to most though. The 27-year-old has been a mainstay of the Scottish team for a decade and has competed in two Olympic Games. Scott’s favoured events are the 100m and 200m freestyle, the same as Renwick’s, and so the pair train together daily.

“It’s great to train with Robbie, he’s something of a veteran of the sport and it’s brilliant to swim with him day in, day out,” says Scott. “The fact that I’m managing to keep up with these guys in training really gives me confidence. When I was going into the [British] trials, I wasn’t too far behind Robbie in training and so I was thinking: ‘If he’s one of the best in Britain then I must have a good chance of doing well too’.”

The saying “success breeds success” is certainly true when it comes to the Stirling swimmers and Scott believes being part of a squad with so much depth is massively beneficial for his development.

“Training at Stirling has been excellent,” he says. “You’re pushed in every single session and it’s pretty competitive within the group. In the 100m freestyle, Robbie and I are quite competitive but not so much in the 200m because he’s quite a bit ahead of me just now. But it’s great to train in an environment like that, it really gets the best out of all of us.”

Despite Scott’s meteoric rise, he acknowledges he is far from the finished product and if he wants to be in Team GB for the Rio Olympics next year then there is much work still to be done.

“I don’t feel like my improvement has been all that quick, it feels to me that it’s been gradual and just everything has gone pretty well in the past couple of years,” he says. “I definitely wouldn’t say I’m where I want to be yet though, I want to continue improving. I’m ridiculously bad in the gym so that’s definitely an area I can improve. I’m not very powerful or strong and the dive and turns are areas I can get a lot better at.

“The Olympic trials are getting close now and that’s definitely the goal. After the Worlds, I’ll discuss the plan with my coach but I’d really love to be in Rio.”