Max Litchfield stays true to his word to carry on with strong performance in world event

​Underneath the scaffolding that held up the grandstand at the La Defense Arena in Paris in late July, Badsworth’s Max Litchfield faced the media with tears in his eyes after finishing fourth in an Olympic final for the third Games in a row, writes Nick Westby.

Just minutes earlier, he had turned towards the final leg of the 400m individual medley in second place, that elusive first Olympic medal within sight.

But as the French crowd roared home favourite Leon Marchand down the finishing straight, Litchfield was passed by two swimmers to touch the line in fourth place, just as he had done in Rio and in Tokyo.

Clearly devastated, Litchfield was still processing the result and how he can have come so close again.

At 29, what did his future hold? Were his best years now behind him? His best opportunity, gone?

Admirably, the former Doncaster Dartes and City of Sheffield swimmer puffed out his chest and defiantly said: “It’s not the end for me.

“I’ll have a few weeks off, reflect and refresh and hopefully my body can pull out four more years. We’ll reflect and come back stronger. I’m not stopping.”

And Litchfield has been true to his word.

For last week he was back competing in an international pool, one of 10 British swimmers contesting the World Short-Course Championships in Budapest.

He began his championships in the 200m individual medley heats, his bad luck continuing from the Olympics as he was ninth fastest in the heats to miss out on the final by just 0.08 of a second.

There were no qualifying problems in Max’s best event, the 400m IM, in which he is a former European gold and world silver medallist, as sailed through as the fastest qualifier.

Unfortunately he was unable to better the time in the final and finished just outside the medals in fifth.

Litchfield was in third at the halfway mark after the butterfly and backstroke legs and maintained his challenge throughout the breaststroke and a rallying closing freestyle, but was pegged back to fifth at the finish.

He said: “I’m not really happy with that given I was quicker in the morning – I don’t really know what’s gone wrong there but we’ll look back at it and see what we should have done differently.

“I just wanted this meet to be a nice springboard and obviously there’s still an element of that, but I want to be competing for those medals every time and I wasn’t even really in the race there as far as I could tell.

"Now we’re onto long course building up to trials and the summer.”

Max also competed in the 200m free style, but was unable to make it into the finals.

A medal in Budapest would have finished off the year nicely for Litchfield, who despite the agony of fourth in Paris has still had a strong 2024, winning his first world championship medal in the long-course pool in Doha back in February and then setting a British record in winning the national 400m IM title in April.

The fact he then lowered his own British title in Paris, just further emphasised that even though he was beaten to the medals, there was little more he could have done.

He has not yet publicly declared that he is swimming onto the Los Angeles Olympics, last week was the first step on that road, with the next key marker being next July’s World Championships in Singapore.