DESPITE being the tender age of just 22, Duncan Scott has to deal with the expectation that every time he competes, he’ll come home with a medal.

His medal record since he broke onto the international scene has been astonishing, picking up no fewer than 20 European, Commonwealth, World and Olympic medals in the past five years, including world relay titles in 2015, 2017 and 2019.

So when Scott appears in Glasgow this week for the European Short-Course Swimming Championships, there will be significant pressure on the Alloa man to collect some silverware, despite the fact short-course is not his favoured event.

But Scott remains unperturbed by the pressure put upon him by others, and insists he will be entirely unaffected by the expectations of the home crowd when the championships begin on Wednesday.

“I am not really too bothered about expectations that other people have of me,” he said.

“I think the expectations that I have of myself are high enough. I am going to go in with my own goals that I want to achieve. There are particular things I am looking to get out of the European Championships.

“It is a good long couple of days and it is potentially the last time I will have an opportunity to race back-to-back days until the trials and maybe, after that, the Olympics. It is a good opportunity to try out different things, different recovery strategies and things like that.”

The 2020 Olympics is now just eight moths away and Scott admits everything is geared towards first of all securing selection at the trials, and then performing to his very best in Tokyo.

The 22-year-old came away from Rio three years ago with two relay silver medals but there is every chance he could pick up some individual silverware as well this time around.

And Scott admits that Tokyo already looms large in his mind.

“Realistically, everything, like most swimmers, is tailored towards the pinnacle of our sport - the Olympic Games,” he said.

“The last couple of years, everything has had to do with challenging myself and trying to expose myself and see what happens to me under immense fatigue or what happens under stress and pressure. From that, we can see what we need to do.”

Scott will have a busy schedule this week having entered a variety of events and he admits he will use the meet in Glasgow to work on things that may well bear fruit come next summer.

“I am not naturally that good in short course in comparison to some others, so it will be good to race hard in Glasgow,” he said.

“It is more about turns underwater and phases like that I can take over to long course. It will be good to expose myself against some of the best in the world. I want to come out of the European Championships with an ideology of knowing what I want to do to prepare to swim fast in the morning.

“That is what it is going to be next year. You are going to have to be ready to swim fast in the morning and I want to know my recovery strategy during the day to then be able to come back in the evening under quite a lot of stress and still perform well.

“It is about doing that on back-to-back days. I think the Europeans is a great opportunity to do that.”

Scott headlines a strong GB team in Glasgow that includes his fellow Scots Ross Murdoch and Scott McLay and with an excellent past record at the Tollcross Pool he admits he cannot wait to get in front of his home crowd again.

“I am really looking forward to competing back in Glasgow. I have been really lucky in the sense that I have had quite a lot of home-crowd competitions in my career,” he said.

“It should be good. The quality is really high with world record holders and European champions and it will be hard, but it will be really good.”