How Sean McCann, brother of Madeleine McCann, overcame tragedy to reach the Commonwealth Games
Tomorrow, an athlete will realise a lifelong dream.
Sean McCann is due to compete in the heats of the Commonwealth Games swimming 400m freestyle in Glasgow’s Tollcross International Swimming Centre, the first major step on a journey which he hopes will end at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
The Commonwealths is a multi-sport competition held every four years between member states of the Commonwealth of Nations and their territories, and has become more of a sporting curio in recent iterations, ranking well below the Olympics.
It means this is far from the year’s most high-profile race, but it could well be one of the most poignant. McCann is the younger brother of Madeleine McCann, a British girl who went missing in May 2007 while on a family holiday in Portugal. Madeleine was three at the time, and sleeping in the apartment with Sean and his twin sister, Amelie, while their parents ate at a nearby restaurant in Praia da Luz, a resort on the western Algarve coast.
Gerry and Kate McCann with their twins Amelie (left) and Sean in Praia da Luz in 2007 (Alban Donohoe/AFP via Getty Images)
Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry, led a high-profile search for their daughter, while London’s Metropolitan Police opened Operation Grange in 2011 and continues to work with authorities in Portugal and Germany to try and find her. Almost two decades later, she remains missing.
The unsolved case has become a source of endless fascination in Britain and beyond, and a cottage industry for the media. It has spawned several books, an eight-part 2019 Netflix documentary — The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann — and barely a week goes by without a fresh theory circulating on social media.
Against this tragic backdrop, Sean’s rise to become an elite swimmer is even more remarkable. He was just two when Madeleine disappeared, and has never given a media interview about his sister, but has inevitably been the subject of significant interest since he was named as part of Scotland’s team for the Commonwealth Games, where he will also compete in the 800m and 1500m races.
The 21-year-old was born in Rothley, five miles north of Leicester in England, but qualifies for Scotland through his father, who was born in Glasgow. This will be his first senior appearance for Scotland after he represented the country at the 2023 Commonwealth Youth Games.
Police launched a huge search for Madeleine McCann after she disappeared in 2007 (Vasco Celio/AFP via Getty Images)
McCann studies chemical engineering at Loughborough University, one of the most renowned centres for sports in the United Kingdom which has produced Olympic gold medal-winning swimmers such as Adam Ramsay-Peaty and Liam Tancock. He trains there and competes as part of its swimming programme.
“I’ve got lots of family up in Glasgow so that makes it even more special,” McCann told the Loughborough University website in an interview released this week. “I was there in 2014, watching the Commonwealth Games as a kid, so to make it now, 12 years later, is really a full-circle moment.”
McCann has embraced swimming’s sharper edges — the early starts, punishing schedule and rigorous demands when it comes to lifestyle and conditioning — at Loughborough.
“At my home club I didn’t really have anyone doing the same events as me, which meant in training you were always working by yourself,” he said. “But here, there’s always been people who are better than me, similar to me, so we push each other all the time, and we’re all striving towards the same sort of things. You can never really slack off with the quality of athletes around you. You’ve got to have a strong mentality in distance swimming.”
McCann admits he is “an underdog” as he prepares to tackle the Commonwealth Games, but there are reasons for optimism. He won bronze in the 800m freestyle at the 2026 Aquatics GB Championships in 8min 0.45sec and finished fourth in the 1,500m freestyle in 15:25.18. He finished fifth in the 400m freestyle and seventh in the 1,500m freestyle at the 2023 Commonwealth Youth Games in Trinidad and Tobago.
Sean McCann competing at the Youth Commonwealth Games (Jamie Squire/Getty Images for Commonwealth Sport)
He has also represented Great Britain in open-water swimming, competing at the 2023 European Junior Championships in Corfu before making his senior European Championships debut in Croatia in 2025.
“He’s a workhorse, just like everybody else in that squad,” his Scotland team-mate Charlie Hutchison told the Daily Mail this week. “We do some disgusting training sessions, but he is never one to complain or moan. He just gets on with it.
“This is definitely something he has worked on when he didn’t have as many people to race against and then moving to such a competitive group. Just not being demoralised and pushing forward.”
How far can McCann go? His ambitions are vast. In a profile published by the Joe Humphries Memorial Trust before the British Olympic trials in April 2024, McCann wrote: “I am aiming to compete at the 2026 Commonwealth Games and also the 2028 Olympics in LA.”
That first objective has been ticked off. And while the Commonwealth Games do not form part of the formal Olympic qualification process — that begins next March — a strong performance in Glasgow could help McCann establish himself and ensure he is known on his own terms.