Peaty Three-Peat Is Game On! Passage To Paris With 57.94 Blast In Hallowed Lane Of Olympic Champion’s First WR
The Adam Peaty three-peat is on! In truth, it’s been on ever since the Olympic champion opted in once more. Just a year after the 30-year-old British breaststroke ace withdrew from racing suffering from mental anguish and a loss of confidence, he not only booked his ticket to the Paris Games but his 57.94sec blast confirmed that he still has a serious shot at an historic third Olympic title in the 100m breaststroke.
Out in 26.80 and home in 57.94 in the lane in which he broke his first world record back in 2015, Peaty took the national title ahead of Loughborough teammate James Wilby, 59.47 and just 0.02sec shy of the automatic cut for a solo berth in Paris, and Archie Goodburn of Edinburgh University, on 1:00.03.
“That was a great swim, executed well – but the most promising thing is that I’m finding peace in the water now, instead of anger and just fighting it, and trying to win like that.” – Adam Peaty
Back in the 57 Zone:
The ticket was Peaty’s goal at the London Aquatics Centre on the first of six days of racing at British Championships and Olympic trials but at 57.94sec, he is on a collision course with Qin Haiyang, the Chinese rival being dubbed “the Purple Dragon”.
The symbol of “wealth and royalty” is somewhat fitting for a man who dominated the opposition in 2023 to claim the first 50, 100 and 200m triple world-title success in history, the 200m in world-record time.
The new king of global breaststroke, Qin clocked a season high and Asian Games of 57.69 to get closer to Peaty’s Mind-The-Gap 56.88 World record from 2019 than anyone else ever has.
Even at that speed, however, the Chinese contender – , who at 24 is four years older than Peaty was when he set his first world record and around the same age as Peaty was when he clocked 56.88 – sits at at No15 on the all-time performances list behind Peaty’s best 14 efforts as the first man to break the 58 and 57-second barriers in a world in which Dutch silver medallist from Tokyo, Arno Kamminga is the only other man ever to race inside 58.
The battle of Qin and Peaty will decide if the British pioneer and greatest breaststroke sprinter in history can double the membership of an exclusive club. Michael Phelps, the American “GOAT” with 23 Olympic golds in his pantheon, is the only man to ever have claimed gold in the same event at three Games – and he did so in three separate events, the 100 and 200m butterfly and the 200m medley.
In Tokyo, Peaty became the first British swimmer ever to retain an Olympic title. With just three years until the next Games, it looked like he had a solid shot at joining Phelps, who in 2016 described Peaty as “the greatest swimmer in the world right now”.
But after a post-Tokyo break, Peaty’s return to fitness was interrupted by a broken foot, a premature return and the first loss of a 100m title race since his global breakthrough in 2014 when he finished fourth in the 100m at a home Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022, Wilby the champion for England.
A year ago, Peaty revealed in The Times that he had been on “a self-destructive spiral, which I don’t mind saying because I’m human.” He’d turned to binging on alcohol to escape the pressures of almost a decade at the top of his game, a split from partner Eiri and the mother of his son. He suffered loss of form and confidence in the pool, panic attacks in training and the “pressure I put on myself to always win and feel like a failure if I didn’t”.
A winter of depression and self-questioning followed. Peaty entered 2023 believing that his days of pioneering were, perhaps, over.
No more. Indeed, it was that since Peaty answered coach Mel Marshall‘s simple question: what do you want? He wanted help, he wanted in and he wanted to try again but taking a different approach. This evening, he noted he hadn’t done a best time in five years but he was delighted that he was just 0.02sec shy of the first of five World 100m records he set back in 2015 in the very same lane in London to do for breaststroke pace what Johnny “Tarzan-to-be” Weissmuller had done for freestyle pace back in 1922.
A hundred and two years on (and nine years since his first London sub-58), a beaming Peaty, who pointed to “the great team around me” and a successful overseas winter-sun training camp, said: “There’s still a lot to come. I haven’t done a PB [personal best] for five years but you don’t give in and I’m coming back. I’m very grateful to be here and that I didn’t give up. Very happy with that.”
On his mental health recovery, his work with Olympic chaplain Ashley Null and the Christianity that has helped him find the solace and calm he craved and working his way back to contention, Peaty noted that he had “regained my spirit for the race and the sport I love”. He added:
“Athletes, we take it very seriously. Never let a good day get away. I’m blessed, I’m healthy. You have to get it in perspective. Some people shrink in the arena. I don’t overthink it anymore. I train to race the best in the world. That’s a pretty good job!”
Adam Peaty – ace gives thanks for the new faith in him and what it has meant to his work in the pool and happiness in life – image courtesy of Aquatics GB and Channel 4
The Road To Recovery and Team Peaty
His coach at Loughborough, Mel Marshall, was quick to set up Project Re-Contracting when Peaty gave a definitive yes to the “simple question – what do you want – in or out … we’ll love you just the same.”
She set up an entourage of experts, including Peaty’s then agent Rob Woodhouse (now head of Swimming Australia), Dr Kate Jordan, Matt Ashman and member of the AP Plus team Richard Chessor, both of British Swimming’s Sports Science and Sports Medicine unit – together at Marshall’s house for a barbecue and “a beautiful new map” of Peaty’s pathway to the Paris 2024 Olympics emerged.
Steve Peters, the author of the mind management book The Chimp Paradox and a psychiatrist who has worked with other swimmers, cyclist Bradley Wiggins and the England football team, joined the line-up.
“We agreed to completely change it all,” Marshall told The Times last October. “We changed the camps, the competitions, the venues we’d visit; we re-contracted and we’re going to give it a good go. We should all be proud of what we’re working on. That’s where it’s at and it will be hard, It will be very difficult.”
Last night, Marshall wore a big smile. Her charge was back in business.
Said Peaty:
“It’s always going to be my mindset, but I’ve got a healthy approach to it. A few years ago, I’d have come out of there disappointed, I’ve come out with a 57 and been disappointed, I’ve come out with a 59 and been quite disappointed.
“I’ve learned to appreciate the moments of greatness for myself, not even relative to the world. For me, that was a great swim, executed well – but the most promising thing is that I’m finding peace in the water now, instead of anger and just fighting it, and trying to win like that.”
Adam Peaty – image – Adam Peaty, a presence in any pool, all the more so in London where he set his first world record back in 2015 – courtesy of Aquatics GB
After receiving his gold medal from his new partner Holly Ramsay, daughter of the world-class super-chef who demands folk have their wits about them when working in the kitchen, Peaty added:
“I’m finding a new version of myself which I’m really liking, and I think that’s a version that can do really well at the Olympics. It’s been nearly 10 years since I went a 57.9 here – where does the time go?! Old people have always said that, I never knew what they meant. I’m just getting more wisdom and more peace. I know that I’m incrementally getting better – and for them to see that, I think that’s more on their back.
“If last July I was just saying, ‘I want to win the Olympics’, it was too big a goal. So I thought, I want to race at the World Cups, did it and learned a lot about myself. I put a great winter in, and then after Christmas we switched again – January, February nailed, March nailed, here we are in April, 57.9 – if I did a 50m race, who knows how fast I’d have gone.”
Adam Peaty – image – a kiss for Holly as she hands out the prizes
In other finals on day 1 in London:
Colbert & Wood Lead Harris and Hope With Paris Tickets For All In 200 Solo & 4×200 Free Relay
Keanna MacInnes and Laura Stephens Gets Their Paris Pass To The Games On 2:07s