An emotional Kathleen Dawson saluted her superb silver at the European Swimming Championships in Budapest as another just reward for her graft in bouncing back from the knee injury in 2018 that almost wrecked her career.
Rebuilt and better than ever before, the 23-year-old from Kirkcaldy is eyeing up Olympic medals in Tokyo, and rightly so.
The 50 metres backstroke here was her warm-up act but she almost stole the show in last night’s final before European record holder Kira Toussaint held onto gold with fellow Dutchwoman Maaike de Waard landing bronze.
In 2016, Dawson took individual European bronze in London but was compelled to wait until she could properly make her mark again. Here, her time of 27.46secs was shy of the astonishing UK record she set in the semis with Stirling University team-mate Cassie Wild just missing the podium in fourth in a personal best of 27.85.
But the Fifer feels ready for her own golden moment when the Scottish duo begin their bids in their favoured 100m today.
She said: “I’m super-pleased with myself. Given everything I’ve been through since 2016, it’s been a hard journey. But I’m so glad I’ve made it back to the podium. Especially in the 50 where I didn’t expect a medal. I was a bit stagnant for a while even before my knee injury. But I knew my swimming career wasn’t going to be over and I’m so glad I stuck it out.”
Wild also looks well capable of joining her in the medals. “It’s been three years since I’ve been anywhere near my 50 PB,” the 19-year-old from Edinburgh declared. “So that’s good looking towards the 100 and 200.”
Duncan Scott picked up his second silver of the championships by anchoring the UK in the men’s 4x200m freestyle along side Tom Dean, Matthew Richards and James Guy. The 24-year-old could do little to haul back the deficit on Russia who ended over a second clear with a championship best of 7:03.48. But there’ll be more in the tank from the 2016 Olympic silver medallists come Tokyo, he vowed.
“I know I’m looking forward to it but I think you should be as well,” Scott said. “We’ve all learnt different things from that and that will really help us going on in a few months time. It’s great to really challenge ourselves. We’ve had our trials and gone into hard training. It’s another opportunity to race fast and really hard. We come in here with expectations. It’s the ideal opportunity to really test ourselves.”
Scott faces a manic Thursday. He will go fishing for 200m individual medley gold this evening, having eased to third in the semi-finals. Add that to the start of the defence of his 200m freestyle title in this morning’s heats. But this is the kind of punishing physical test that Alloa’s aquatic juggernaut has trained for.
He added: “The 200m free will be a dogfight to make it through but I’m looking forward to it. I just need to see what I can change from tonight.”
His Stirling University team-mate Ross Murdoch will take his shot at repeating the gold he picked up in 2016 in tonight’s 200m breaststroke final.
The 27-year-old was third in one semi with James Wilby third in the other, with the former champion ready for whatever unfolds.
Murdoch said: “I executed a good race even though it didn’t go as anticipated. It’s a nice feeling that me and Wilby will be back for the final.
“That was pretty good. And with an extra rest, I can look at the recordings and the splits and see if I can squeeze more out of that. I’ve been trying to move it on each round and this gives me an opportunity for that.”
Keanna Macinnes underlined her potential by reaching today’s women’s 200m butterfly final on her senior debut.
The 18-year-old from Livingston survived the semis as the eighth-quickest qualifier in 2:09.76 with fellow Brit Laura Stephens also progressing.
“I’m just really glad I got the chance to come and even make the semis in the first place because my heats traditionally haven’t been the best,” Macinnes admitted.
“I’ll have an outside lane. It would have been nicer to be closer to the centre but it’s good to be in a final in my first senior competition.”
Molly Renshaw and Sarah Vasey were fifth and sixth in the women’s 100m breaststroke with Sweden’s Sarah Hansson taking gold.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here