Sun won’t stop me shining...
SCOTT HOPES CAREER IS DEFINED BY GLORY AND NOT THAT CLASH WITH CHINESE STAR YANG
DUNCAN SCOTT insists his tunnel vision has protected him from the long shadow of Sun Yang once again looming over his sport. And it is that intense focus, being honed and shaped with the help of his colleagues in the GB swimming team, that he hopes will finally overcome the 6ft 7in Chinese and all others shrouded in doping scandals once and for all.
Four months have now passed since Scott sparked an explosive reaction from Sun after the 200metres freestyle final at the World Championships in South Korea when refusing to remain on the podium with the gold-medal winner and shake his hand.
Sun, suspended for three months in 2014 after testing positive for banned stimulant trimetazidine, was only permitted to compete as a result of waiting for a hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport over his failure to provide samples to anti-doping officers in September 2018.
That took place in farcical circumstances in Switzerland just under two weeks ago, with a decision on his future in the sport now not expected until the new year.
Scott, however, claims his old foe’s return to the spotlight has barely featured on his radar during a busy spell of competition and has held up his peerless relay team-mate Adam Peaty, Olympic champion and routine destroyer of world records, as a prime example of the mentality that exists within British swimming’s elite to blow everyone — drug cheat or not — out of the water fair and square from here on in.
The Englishman is an irrepressible example of what can be done clean and someone Scott is studying closely as he pursues continued progress in the quest for glory at Tokyo 2020.
Peaty represents where the Alloa-raised star wants to be — winning individual golds to go along with his many relay successes at world level and relegating that now-infamous protest in Gwangju to a footnote in his personal history.
‘I am only 22,’ said Scott, who will lead the British squad at the European Short Course Championships in Glasgow next week. ‘If that is the thing that defines my career, I would be gutted.
‘I don’t think it is, though, and I’d like to think that, if I retired today, there would be many things that are spoken about other than just that moment.
‘It might have helped other things within the sport, but I’d like to think many of the things I have done override it.
‘The great privilege I have in working and training with a lot of the athletes I do is that it (doping) is out of our minds.
‘Our job is to make ourselves as good as possible, so that becomes irrelevant — because we are better than them anyway. That’s the idea for most of the athletes in Britain.
‘Look at Peaty. I know for a fact that he has never taken anything. What’s he got? The top 18 fastest times for 100m breaststroke? The guy is a machine.
‘I have seen his progression over time from 2014 and his first-ever world record to what he is now. You stand there watching him and you are expecting the unexpected. Anticipating things that, before he swam, you just thought were crazy.
‘There are certain things he does that I am trying to replicate in my own way.
‘Being part of a relay team with him, you stand by in the blocks and there is almost a feeling of invincibility. You’re like: “I know everyone else here is miles slower than him” — and that’s just fact.’
Peaty, of course, has also been vocal of late about three-time Olympic freestyle champion Sun.
WADA, sport’s global anti-doping agency, have asked CAS to throw out a caution served by swimming’s governing body FINA to the 27-year-old Chinese for not providing a sample two years ago and replace it with a lengthy ban.
However, his recent hearing in Montreux became bogged down in bad translations and Sun’s assertion that the WADA team that appeared at his home in Zhejiang were unable to prove their identity — with stories emerging from China that one of them was supposedly a construction worker obsessed with taking photos.
Peaty has described Sun’s assertion that he is simply standing up for all athletes as ‘an absolute joke’ amid claims vials containing blood samples were smashed by his entourage that night in 2018 and insisted that ‘95 or 99 per cent’ of athletes do not support him.
‘Well, I think, out of the two, I would probably back Peaty,’ stated Scott. ‘I have not kept an eye on it, to be perfectly honest.’
Asked if his actions in South Korea had made a difference, he replied: ‘I don’t know how I would see if there has been any impact. He (Sun Yang) is not going to be at the Europeans, so that is one thing we can be thankful for. ‘All I have done is that I didn’t shake his hand. The governing body and WADA, I guess, should be taking the onus but, in most sports, I think it is athlete-driven. ‘I know it is good with the ISL (International Swimming League) that they have a rule where you cannot compete if you have any kind of doping history. A lot of athletes are behind that and like that idea.’ Has making a stand against Sun, though, caused the sometimes-spiky Scott to consider making further moves towards becoming more of a statesman than a simple goal-driven swimmer. ‘Cassius Clay? Muhammad Ali?’ he laughed. ‘It is not something I’ve thought about. I have tunnel vision in terms of what I want to achieve in the sport and it has taken me a couple of years to realise the impact I can have on others. ‘It is probably something I’ve shied away from, but I can help the next generation and help swimming evolve.’