By Graham Thomas
Matt Richards is already Wales’ greatest swimmer and he might yet become the country’s most celebrated Olympian.
He’s 21 years old – not that you would guess watching his TV interviews from Paris, where his maturity and level-headedness is as clear and bright as his talent.
That applies whether Richards has just won a gold medal, been pipped by milliseconds, or failed to make a final.
The current world champion, as from Tuesday night is now the winner of two Olympic gold medals and one silver, whilst there are plenty of other medals in the pool still to be decided.
Since he was born in Droitwich and has never lived in Wales, there are some who question his national credentials. They will argue that unlike Lynn Davies, Richard Meade, Hannah Mills, Geraint Thomas or Jade Jones, he is not “properly Welsh”.
It’s a fatuous argument, made sillier by the long-established rules of international sport that parentage is a qualification for nationality.
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Few claim that Wales footballers Brennan Johnson, Dan James, Ethan Ampadu, Chris Mepham, Kieffer Moore and many others should not be wearing the dragon.
Or that English public schoolboy Will Rowlands shouldn’t be playing for the Wales rugby team.
Richards’ father Simon – his number one fan and chief medal-protector – is from Cardiff and when his son was asked to swim for England, the teenager politely declined and told them he was going to swim for Wales at the Commonwealth Games.
Like so many others in the Welsh diaspora, he says: “I’ve grown up with all my family telling me I’m Welsh and now I’m older, absolutely I’m Welsh.
“I see myself as Welsh aside from sport. In general, I am absolutely a proud Welshman regardless of the fact I was born in England.”
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The desire to be in the water was there from an early age, too. It’s family folklore that on a holiday in Tenerife, when he was five years old, Richards was so disgusted at having to wear armbands when older kids didn’t, that he threw them off and jumped straight in at the deep end.
“My parents both had a heart attack, my dad ran in and jumped in after me but I was fine and I loved it and that was where I found I had a real love for the water.”
The love affair was tested during the first Covid lockdowns. As the most promising male teenage swimmer in the UK, Richards was suddenly denied the ability to go and train at his local pool.
So, he and his father ordered a free-standing pool online and constructed it in his back garden.
The adult-size paddling pool enabled him to train like a giant hamster on a giant wheel – ingeniously hooked up to a bungee cord that was bolted into the back of his parents’ house.
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Worryingly for bungee jumpers the world over, Richards was pulling with such force in the Droitwich back garden that the first cord snapped and had to be replaced.
He was busy going nowhere, but the relentless hours spent ploughing through the water made him reach Tokyo where he won his first Olympic gold medal as part of the men’s 4 x 200m freestyle relay team.
The second Olympic medal – a silver – arrived at the start of this week in Paris, when he fell agonisingly short of gold to finish second in the final of the men’s 200m freestyle. A less than perfect finish cost him Olympic gold after missing out by just two hundredths of a second.
The redemption came quickly on Wednesday night when Richards, James Guy, Tom Dean and Duncan Scott retained their men’s 4×200 metres freestyle relay title to give Team GB their first Olympic gold of the Paris Games in the pool.
In winning, the quartet became the first four swimmers ever to retain an Olympic relay title.
Legendary sailor Mills won two golds and a silver and Richards has now matched that total at 21.
His next target is three Olympic golds – equestrian rider Meade won three – before he goes for the big one.
Paulo Radmilovic – Wales’ most successful Olympian – won four golds, three in water polo and one in swimming.
With, arguably, two, or possibly three, more Olympic Games left in him, few would bet against Richards drawing alongside Radmilovic.
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