GB win freestyle relay for first 2025 Worlds gold

In the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay, Great Britain won their first gold medal at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore.

In the final race of day six, world champions Matt Richards, James Guy, Jack McMillan, and Duncan Scott won in six minutes, 59.84 seconds.

In the final leg, Scott was cheered home by his team-mates, who finished more than a second ahead of his Chinese foe, with Australia coming in third.

With the victory, GB reclaims the 2023 title they won.

Ben Proud, who finished sixth fastest in the men’s 50-meter freestyle semi-finals, has a chance to win another medal for GB later this week.

Luke Greenbank placed eighth in the men’s 200-meter backstroke final, while Angharad Evans placed fifth in the women’s final.

Qin Haiyang, a native of China, earlier celebrated a second gold at the championships by punching the air before waving his arms wide to the cheers of a crowded audience.

Ippei Watanabe of Japan won the silver medal, and the Netherlands’ Caspar Corbeau took the bronze.

Qin, 26, won the 100-meter breaststroke earlier this week, and he is returning to form after failing to qualify for the 200-meter breaststroke final at the previous year’s Paris Olympics.

When he was implicated in a significant doping scandal, his preparations for the Olympics turned disastrous.

Before the 2021 pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics, Qin was named among 23 Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for a prescription heart medication.

The swimmers were not subject to sanctions because the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) accepted the Chinese government’s claim that contaminated food led to the positive tests.

In another instance, defending champion Marrit Steenbergen denied 200-meter champion Mollie O’Callaghan a sprint double as the Dutchwoman won the 100-meter freestyle.

In the men’s 200-meter backstroke final, Olympic champion Hubert Kos and South African’s Pieter Coetze squared off fiercely.

Another Olympic champion, the American Kate Douglass, won the women’s 200-meter breaststroke gold.