If the USA at least has Cullen Jones, Britain possesses no black swimmer in the national squad. In athletics, blacks have been among the most successful competitors over the past 30 years. In swimming, Paul Marshall, a backstroker in the 1980 Olympics, and Austin Shortman, a freestyle specialist in the early 1990s, are rare exceptions.

Chris Martin, the black head swimming coach in Scotland, was raised near Philadelphia and, like Jones, says he came into swimming “by accident”. “It was a rural environment and there was nothing to do in the 1960s. So I swam. But I never saw any other black competitors until I reached the junior nationals and then there were only two out of more than 800 entries.”

After coaching the US team at Olympics and world championships, he moved to Britain nine years ago and has found a similar absence of blacks in elite swimming here. But he says it is inevitable this will change. “I have always believed the obstacles are social rather than physiological. Once people said blacks couldn’t run long distances and that has proved wrong. Society is changing and is giving more people opportunities. Sport rarely leads society, but mirrors it.”

Dr Ken van Someren, head of physiology at the English Institute of Sport, says: “We do not know of any physiological evidence why blacks produce fewer top-class swimmers than whites. Very little research has been done. The scientific difficulty is there is as much genetic variation between northern European whites and Mediterranean whites as there is between either of them and black Africans. And then there is genetic differences between east and west Africans. The scientific evidence is equivocal.”

British swimming certainly recognises the need to get more blacks into the sport and has supported grassroots initiatives. Jo Melchior, the Amateur Swimming Association representative for Lewisham, says: “The statement that blacks can’t swim is a tired old myth. For the ethnic minorities there has been a lack of role models, a lack of coaches and teachers and a lack of decision-makers in important positions in sport. This has given the minorities a lack of sense of belonging and the sport is not on their cultural agenda.

“Cullen Jones is a great hope, although, of course, it would be even better if a black swimming world record-holder were British. The important thing is to get the ethnic minorities into the water at an early age. The initial fear of the water is the same for every child and the smile on the child’s face when they conquer the fear is the same whatever their colour.”

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