Katie Shanahan beamed at the breakthrough staring back at her from the scoreboard: her first gold medal of her senior career also delivered a British-record of 2:06.13 in a 200m backstroke final she controlled and dominated.

A prolific gold-medal winner in her junior days, Shanahan, just turned 22, has a series of silver medals in her senior vault, her latest for Scotland at a home Commonwealth Games two weeks ago in Glasgow.

Today, she was much faster. The national standard had stood for 17 years and 10 days, since Gemma Spofforth clocked 2:06.66 at the Rome 2009 circus of shiny suits.

However, underpinning Shanahan's progress on the clock was the reason that bodes well on the journey to LA2028: she swam her own race, looking neither left nor right of her vantage point in lane 4 - not that there was anyone to look at after the first length.

Down to the first turn, the French crowd roared as its charge Pauline Mahieu sped ahead, turning in 29.91, the Brit 0.43sec adrift. Too fast, too soon, to cope with what followed from Shanahan, who took the lead half-way home on lap two, her 1:01.80 split leaving Mahout lagging by 0.82.

Off the turn, Shanahan held the water, her flow and momentum carrying her to a 1:33.65 split at the last turn, by which time Camila Rebelo of Portugal had edged ahead of Mahieu 2.2sec adrift the champion to be. Rebelo had the fastest last lap, but it all came too late, Shanahan the champion of the race and the lessons she'd finally mastered (see below the result)

• ALL RESULTS IN FULL

So, Katie - coached at the University of Stirling performance program guided by Ben Higson and Brad Hay, such control, such confidence, no hint of looking around at anyone or anything else - is that the right way to read it?

"Yeah, I do think so. I think in the past I've kind of got caught up in what everyone is doing around me and kind of based my race on where other people are in the race and where I am type thing. But tonight I knew I was in really good shape and I was really confident going in. So I knew my race plan, I knew my race plan with coaches, and I just didn't really want anyone else to kind of get in the way of that. And I knew that after 50, if I was ahead, I would have been able to kind of command the race. And I think that's something that really helped."

A first senior career gold. How did that feel?

"I'm so happy with that. I feel like for the past few Europeans I've been silver. I think I've been silver like 3 times, I think. So to finally get that gold, it's so special. And yeah, I'm just really, really happy right now. I think it might take a while to sink in."

There were all those golds and medals in her junior years, but the senior breakthrough, a national mark just 0.05sec shy of the championship standard set in 2021, holds special significance in the legend and lore of the event: Hungarian Krizstina Egerzsegi, the only swimmer ever to win the 200m at three straight Olympics, set a benchmark World record at 2:06.62. It stood between 1991 and the advent of short-lived shiny suits in 2008.

For the first time in 35 years, the British record is now faster than the legend's legendary record. And you did it, Katie Shanahan. Mean much?

"Yeah, yeah. Um, I've had my eye on that British record for quite a while now, and I knew that I was capable of it, but I feel like for the past few years since I was a junior, I've kind of had 101 things that have gotten in my way, and injuries and illnesses and that sort of thing. So to finally get it, I'm just so delighted. And yeah, it's, it's very special."

Shanahan is the first British winner in the event since Lizzie Simmonds in 2010. The Scot, who recently turned down an offer to appear on the reality TV show Love Island because her training commitments would not allow her to take the time out required, claimed European silver in 2022.

The writing was on the end wall in her junior days: she was Olympic Youth festival champion in the 200m backstroke and both medleys, 200 and 400m, in 2019, when she claimed a six-medal haul, including silvers in three relays. In 2021, she made it six podiums again, with two medals of each colour, golds on medley and silvers on backstroke at the European Junior Championships.

Simmonds, a member of Britain's Smart Track squad in the days of Australian mentor Bill Sweetenham, had been the only Brit to claim the senior continental crown in the 200m since the event's introduction in 1970, and she achieved the feat twice, her first gold in 2010.

Our history file shows how the events of the 1970s continue to dominate the all-times medals table, East Germany's state doing program yet the official result that shames generations of governors in Olympic sport and the sport of swimming: