Richards a fingertip from gold as Britain still search for pool glory

Silver again by just 0.02sec, this time in 200m freestyle, with Scott agonisingly fourth

- Andy Bull

The times are slow and margins are slim in the Olympic pool, where the Great Britain team won their second silver medal of the championships last night. It was the Welshman Matt Richards who did it, with a superb swim from lane one in the men's 200m freestyle.

He finished upjust two-hundredths of a second behind the winner, the 19-year-old Romanian David Popovici. Which just happened to be the very same margin between Adam Peaty and Nicolò Martinenghi, the gold medalist in the 100m breaststroke, the night before.

British Swimming's performance director, Chris Spice, always calls this a "fingertip sport", but here in Paris races are being settled by the whites of the nails.

This one came down to a ferocious final 50m in which Popovici, Richards, the USA's Luke Hobson and Great Britain's Duncan Scott jockeyed back and forth for the winning millimetre.

For the briefest moment, Richards was convinced he had won it. He believed that he had touched the wall first, but hadn't managed to do it with enough force to beat Popovici.