A GRANDFATHER has vowed to keep on smashing records after being crowned a double European champion.

Ian McKay overcame double shoulder surgery and the coronavirus lockdown to climb onto the top step of the podium in Rome in September.

Competing in the 65–69-year-old category at the LEN European Masters Aquatics Championships, he first took gold in the 50m butterfly in a time of 30.46 seconds.

The following day, he again finished ahead of his swim rivals and claimed gold in the 50m freestyle in a time of 27.86.

The champion swimmer said: “At the end of August and beginning of September, I signed into the European Masters Championships in Rome.

“That is like the old man Olympics!

“There were about 8,500 athletes competing and it was a huge turnout.”

The 66-year-old moved to East Lothian more than a decade ago after running his own roofing business in the west of Scotland for almost 40 years.

Since then, he has embraced the great outdoors, regularly surfing and taking to the pool at North Berwick.

He said: “It all stemmed from surfing. When I moved to East Lothian and retired, I found I had gone from being 150 miles per hour to an absolute dead stop.

“My day was my own and I decided to get up and become a professional athlete when I retired.

“All I had on my to-do list was get up, go to the swimming pool, the gym or take the dog for a walk.”

However, his journey to European success was far from straight forward.

He said: “I got into competitions and then started to work my way through to Scottish and British medals.

“I ended up being third fastest in the world four or five years ago.

“There was a Russian and American ahead of me but I tore through both shoulders and had major shoulder surgery on my left shoulder in 2018.

“That took me over a year to recover from and then just as I was recovering lockdown came.

“That was another year and just as I was getting back into the pool and lockdown was lifting, I did the exact same thing with my right shoulder and had to have major reconstruction in the right.”

Despite those setbacks, Ian, who lives in Whitekirk, was determined to get back in the pool once again.

A member of North Berwick Swim Club and Edinburgh’s Warrender Baths Club, he has been surrounded by sport his whole life.

As well as swimming, he represented Scotland at diving before swapping the pool for dry land and trying his hand at gymnastics.

A 40-foot fall off a roof deprived him of the chance to represent his country at the Commonwealth Games in 1978 and he later fell in love with surfing.

He took up pole-vaulting, which he described as “just gymnastics on the end of a 16-foot stick”, before going full circle and returning to the pool.

Despite his success, the grandfather-of-three has no plans to hang up his swimming goggles just yet.

Instead, he is targeting European records and taking on the best from around the globe at the World Championships in Japan next summer.

He said: “The oldest swimmer competing was 104 years old and that is an inspiration.

“I got to see a 96-year-old help a 97-year-old onto the blocks and that moved me to tears. That was the most incredible image and I will carry that with me going forward – it does not matter what age I am.”