\t\t\t\t\t2026 European Swimming Championships<\/p>\n
Men\u2019s 4\u00d7200 Freestyle Relay \u2013 Final<\/p>\n
World Record: 6:58.55 \u2013\u00a0USA, 2009
\nEuropean Record: 6:58.58 \u2013\u00a0Great Britain,\u00a02021
\nEuropean Championship Record: 7:03.48 \u2013 Russia, 2021
\nEuropean Junior Record: 7:09.16 \u2013 Neutral Athletes B, 2026
\n2024 European Champion \u2013 Lithuania \u2013 7:08.04<\/p>\n
Final Standings<\/p>\n
Great Britain (Richards, McMillan, Guy, Scott), 7:01.52 CR
\nFrance (Marchand, Largeron, Cristofini, Fuchs), 7:02.23
\nGermany (M\u00e4rtens, Sorgius, Baschnitt, Jahn), 7:02.28
\nItaly, 7:02.82
\nLithuania, 7:03.53
\nNeutral Athletes B, 7:03.86
\nIsrael, 7:07.55
\nGreece, 7:08.15<\/p>\n
Great Britain lowered the European Championship record by nearly two seconds to take the win in 7:01.52 tonight, rounding off the first night of the 2026 European Championships with a gold medal in an event they have made their own over the last decade.<\/p>\n
Matt Richards<\/a> led off in 1:45.44, with Jack McMillan<\/a> swimming second and splitting 1:46.62. At that point the British team was in 5th, nearly a second off leaders Italy.<\/p>\n James Guy<\/a> threw down a blistering 1:44.07 on the third leg to move them up into top spot, his second 1:44-flat split in three weeks after clocking a 1:44.03 at the Commonwealth Games. He was just 0.27 seconds off his fastest ever split, a 1:43.80 from the 2017 World Championships where he ran down the U.S. for gold.<\/p>\n He handed over to Duncan Scott<\/a> for the anchor leg, with the 2020 Olympic silver medalist splitting 1:45.39 as he held off Germany\u2019s Cornelius Jahn<\/a> (1:45.84) and France\u2019s Roman Fuchs<\/a> (1:45.75).<\/p>\n This was the first European title in this event for Great Britain since 2018, and just their third ever after wins in 2010 and 2018. They have won the last two Olympic titles and World Championship titles in 2023 and 2025, all of them in times under 7:00.<\/p>\n While Russia, the previous record holder, was over a second and a half faster over the first half of the race, Guy\u2019s split was nearly two and a half seconds faster than Aleksander Krasnykh<\/a> was five years ago. Duncan Scott<\/a> was then a second faster than Mikhail Vekovishchev<\/a>.<\/p>\n Split Comparison<\/p>\n Despite setting a new Championship record, Great Britain were pushed far closer than may have been expected. They were in a battle with Germany and France right down to the final few meters, and Matt Richards<\/a>\u2018 strategy of pushing the first half of his leg seemed to backfire.<\/p>\n With Leon Marchand<\/a> going out in a blistering 1:43.76 for France out of lane 1, Richards seemed to try to hold onto his pace with a 50.31 opening 50, just 0.23 seconds behind the Frenchman. He paid for it down the final 50 of his leg, falling to 4th and handing over to McMillan in a crowd.<\/p>\n Marchand moved to #6 all-time with his leadoff, and Carlos D\u2019Ambrosio (1:44.72) and Dimitrios Markos<\/a> (1:44.93) set new national records for Italy and Greece, respectively. Markos hacked 1.35 seconds off his previous record of 1:46.28 to skip over the 1:45s entirely.<\/p>\n France (7:02.23) and Germany (7:02.28) both set national records to win silver and bronze, with France getting a 1:45.28 split from 17-year-old Sauveur Cristofini<\/a> and a 1:45.75 anchor from Roman Fuchs<\/a> as they won silver from lane 1. Germany had four swimmers in the 1:45s, with a 1:45.10 split from Jarno Baschnitt<\/a> and a 1:45.63 from Timo Sorgius<\/a>.<\/p>\n Italy were just off the podium despite D\u2019Ambrosio\u2019s 1:44.72 leadoff, touching half a second behind Germany in 7:02.82, with Lithuania setting their second big national record of the day to place 5th in 7:03.53.<\/p>\n They had started today with a national record of 7:08.04 from the 2024 Championships, which they lowered to 7:05.93 in the heats this morning. They found another 2.40 seconds tonight, bringing in Tajus Juska<\/a>, who anchored in 1:45.30, while Danas Rapsys<\/a> led off in 1:45.62 and Tomas Navikonis<\/a> split 1:45.45.<\/p>\n Despite falling to 8th, Greece set a national record in the relay to pair with Markos\u2019 individual record. They sliced 0.95 seconds off the 7:09.10 they set at the 2024 World Championships with the same four swimmers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2026 European Swimming Championships Men\u2019s 4\u00d7200 Freestyle Relay \u2013 Final World Record: 6:58.55 \u2013\u00a0USA, 2009 European Record: 6:58.58…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[42504,42505,13,41441,42506,41444,42507,9436,9439,9441,41453,41458,42508,9443,42509,41472,41473,41474,41475,9447,41477],"class_list":["post-100946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-aleksander-krasnykh","tag-aleksandr-shchegolev","tag-britain","tag-carlos-dambrosio","tag-cornelius-jahn","tag-danas-rapsys","tag-dimitrios-markos","tag-duncan-scott","tag-jack-mcmillan","tag-james-guy","tag-jarno-baschnitt","tag-leon-marchand","tag-martin-malyutin","tag-matt-richards","tag-mikhail-vekovishchev","tag-roman-fuchs","tag-sauveur-cristofini","tag-tajus-juska","tag-timo-sorgius","tag-tom-dean","tag-tomas-navikonis"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117072802412109954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}