Ben Proud Finally Captures His First Olympic Medal

2024 PARIS SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES

• Pool Swimming: July 27 – August 4, 2024
  • Open Water Swimming: August 8 – 9, 2024
• La Défense Arena — Paris, France
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• European Recap, Day 1: Lukas Märtens Doesn’t “Give A Shit” About 400 Free WR As He Wins Gold
• European Recap, Day 2: Leon Marchand Answers The Hype With An Olympic Record
• European Recap, Day 3: European Men Have Won Every Individual Event Through Three Days
• European Recap, Day 4: Team GB’s 4×200 Free Relay The First To Defend Olympic Gold With Identical Lineup
• European Recap, Day 5: Out of the Spotlight, Josha Salchow is Having The Meet Of His Life
• European Recap, Day 6: Apostolos Christou Wins Greece’s First Medal In The Pool Since 1896

“Am I ever going to get what I want,” is a terrifying thought for anybody. For high-level swimmers that thought can be tinged with the fear that years of work, dedication, and sacrifice will not result in the thing every swimmer dreams about: an Olympic medal. And easily the thought becomes not “Am I ever” but “What if I don’t?” 

For Great Britain’s Ben Proud, ‘years of work’ comprises over a decade on the senior international stage. He made his first senior World Championship in 2013, qualifying for the British team by breaking the national record in the 50 butterfly. 

Since then, he’s won a lot. At 19, he won double gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in the 50 freestyle and 50 butterfly. He earned bronze in the 50 butterfly at the European Championships that same year. Those two events are Proud’s specialty, making him stick out in a British program that’s strongest in the middle distances. 

But as Proud’s medal count steadily increased, there was one medal that eluded him. At his debut Games in Rio, Proud finished an agonizing 4th place in the 50 freestyle, .19 seconds behind Nathan Adrian. He swam the 100 freestyle as well and finished 29th but Proud is hyper-specialized for the 50s. And there are no 50s of stroke at the Olympics which means he puts everything on the 50 freestyle at the Games. 

Proud bounced back after the Rio Games. He dazzled at the 2018 European Championships, setting a then-textile world record of 21.11 in the 50 freestyle. But three years later in Tokyo, on swimming’s biggest stage, Proud couldn’t replicate the swim. Again, he finished off the podium in the Olympic final of the men’s 50 freestyle, tying for 5th in 21.72. 

“I didn’t perform nearly as well as I would have hoped,” Proud said on the SwimSwam podcast in the fall of 2022. “It was really quite heartbreaking, quite emotional, [it] threw me into quite a bad place.” 

Proud admitted that he was considering retiring from swimming and “took a big step back” from the sport following the Games. But eventually, he said, he figured out how to find love for the sport again. He moved training bases in April 2022, heading back to Gloria Sports Arena in Turkey. He began to play around with his training, incorporating things he loved that he used to do and also trying new things. The gym became crucial to his training and more important than meterage. 

While he has a gym coach at Gloria, he’s largely alone for his pool work. He’s aware that it’s an untraditional setup. “I have taken a very different route from lots of people. I’ve almost had to craft my own way…maybe that’s why it’s taken me a little bit longer to find my comfortable place within the swimming world.” 

It’s been proven over and over — happy swimmers are fast swimmers. And though Proud said that he went into the 2022 season focused on getting experience, not the times or the medals, the results still came. With World Championships, Commonwealth Games, and European Championships all on the schedule, 2022 provided a wealth of opportunity to British swimmers. Proud took full advantage and won the 50 freestyle at all three championships, becoming the first to achieve that Triple Crown. 

He won 50 freestyle bronze at the 2023 World Championships. Then he earned three golds at the European SC Championships in December, and rattled the SC 50 freestyle world record (20.18), setting the stage for another Olympic year. 

At the British Trials in April, Proud exploded. He won the 50 freestyle in 21.25, the third-fastest swim of his career and best since 2018. Even with the added pressure of the Olympic stage, Proud maintained his 2022 line of thinking by not setting a medal as the goal.

“I’m lucky that I’m in this position that if I were to retire without a medal, I’m really ok,” he told PlymouthLive. “The pressure comes from wanting to please the team around me and everyone who has shown so much support throughout my career. It would be quite a fitting way to say thank you to them. I just want to go there, be happy on the block, and swim what I can do.” 

Proud headed into the final tied with Cameron McEvoy as the fastest qualifier after they both swam 21.38 in the semifinals. In the chaos of the final, the pair separated themselves at about the halfway point, hanging on to all the clear water they could find. They hurtled to the wall together and at the touch, Proud claimed the silver medal in 21.30, the 5th fastest time of his career per SwimRankings. 

In a split second, Proud ticked off the last lingering thing he had yet to accomplish in his career. The medal doesn’t suddenly validate the years of work Proud put in to get to this moment, that effort has value no matter the result. But it does affirm that after disappointment in Tokyo, Proud still had something left to give—to the sport, or maybe just to himself. 

“Three years ago is when I burst into tears. I couldn’t take the fact that I had kind of failed in my race back in Tokyo. But that was probably the most fitting thing I went through because if I hadn’t gone through that, I wouldn’t have experienced these past three years, which has had the highest of highs and lowest of lows,” he said after the Olympic final. 

Proud’s always been a cerebral swimmer. His mental game is something that he focuses on and on the SwimSwam podcast, he likens it to windsurfing. The parachute is the ambition, he explains, and he uses his ambition to guide and pull himself along his career. Whether that’s how he’s always understood himself or it’s a tool he developed after Tokyo, it’s something that’s propelled him forward. 

This isn’t the same Ben Proud that we first met in 2013. The swimmer who stood on the Olympic podium tonight is someone new—someone who’s been able to understand both his achievements and disappointments and use them to pull himself through the water and to new heights in an already impressive career. 

Day 7 Quick Hits

• Leon Marchand is 4/4 at these Olympic Games. He completed his individual events with an exclamation point, storming to the win in the 200 IM with a 1:54.06. It’s a new Olympic record for the Frenchman, just .06 seconds off Ryan Lochte‘s world record, which has stood since 2011. Marchand has now turned in the second-fastest performances all time in the 200 IM, 400 IM, and 200 breaststroke, while also putting up the fourth-best 200 fly swim. It’s been a storybook home Olympics for Marchand, who is also the fourth swimmer to win four individual golds at a single Games.
• There was all kinds of history made on the men’s 50 freestyle Olympic podium. We’ve talked about Proud, Cam McEvoy is the first Australian champion, and then there’s bronze medallist Florent Manaudou, who got the French crowd energized well before Marchand hit the deck. With his bronze medal, Manaudou is the first man to medal in the 50 freestyle at four consecutive Olympics, an impressive display of consistency for the 33-year-old star.
• For the second Olympics, Duncan Scott is the 200 IM silver medalist. Behind Marchand’s fireworks, Scott had an impressive swim himself, coming .03 seconds from his British record set at the Tokyo Games with a 1:55.31. The medal is also a milestone for Scott, who passes Chris Hoy in total Olympic medals and becomes Scotland’s most decorated Olympic athlete with seven.

More Day 7 Continental and National Records

• The French team continued their strong meet in prelims of the mixed 4×100 medley relay. There, the squad of Yohann Ndoye-Brouard, Antoine Viquerat, Lilou Ressencourt, and Marie Wattel broke the national record with a 3:43.99. The previous record stood at 3:46.07 from the 2023 World Championships, meaning that this group took 2.08 seconds off the mark. They’ll have a chance to improve their time again, as they qualified 7th for tomorrow’s final.
• Nyls Korstanje broke the Dutch 100 fly record in the semifinals. Korstanje fired off a 50.59, qualifying for the final as the 4th seed. He owned the previous record, which he set at 50.79 during the heats of the 2023 World Championships. That final is led by two European swimmers, the defending silver medalist Kristof Milak (50.38) and the 2023 world champion Maxime Grousset (50.41).

European Medal Table Thru Day 7