​Sean McCann was just two years old when his sister went missing in Portugal in 2007On Thursday morning, Loughborough University published their latest video featuring a student athlete who will be competing over the coming days at the Commonwealth Games.The short insight into Sean McCann’s uplifting swimming journey soon had rather more views than their previous postings following the widespread reporting this week that he is the younger brother of Madeleine McCann, the three-year-old girl who went missing in Portugal in 2007.Sean’s ongoing progress in elite swimming has become increasingly known in sporting circles, but his rise to the Commonwealth Youth Games and European Junior Championship stayed largely under the public radar. A first major senior championship, however, has taken him onto a very different stage and the 21-year-old’s selection on home soil in the 400 metres, 800m and 1500m freestyle at these Commonwealth Games marks him out as a potential Olympian two years from now in Los Angeles.Sean qualifies for Scotland through his father and is expected to be supported by his parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, who first met in Glasgow, as well as many Glasgow-based family members. He will start at lunchtime on Saturday in the 400m freestyle at the Tollcross International Swimming Centre.Sean’s ranking in the three long-distance events improves as the distance rises, and he goes into his first Commonwealth Games with respectively the 10th, eighth and sixth fastest times of the qualified competitors. The freestyle field in all three events is led by the Australian Sam Short, a World Championships gold medallist in 2023 who just missed the podium at the Paris Olympics.“I’m very excited, it’s my first senior Games, so I’m just looking forward to representing Scotland and doing my absolute best,” Sean said this week in that Loughborough YouTube video. “It’s the pinnacle really … especially at a home Games. I’ve got lots of family up in Glasgow so that makes it even more special. I was there in 2014 [at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games], watching as a kid, so to make it now, 12 years later, is really a full circle moment.”Credit : Loughborough UniversitySean was nine back then, a period in which his parents had repeatedly spoken about their determination to ensure that Sean and his twin sister Amelie, who were both two when Madeleine disappeared, could grow up with as much normality and opportunity as possible.Their subsequent achievements, both in academia and sports, suggest that the McCanns have done a remarkable job in navigating this challenge. “Our worry is for our children,” Kate said in 2017. “I think we’ve tried to educate them a little bit as well because obviously it’s not just us that has fallen victim to the downside of social media.“At some point you’ve got to realise that time is not frozen and I think both of us realise that we owed it to the twins to make sure that their life is as fulfill