Peaty: I want to win 50 medals
IT’S not entirely surprising that an athlete with an enormous lion tattooed on his shoulder has some rather bold goals for the remainder of his career.
in rough order, Adam Peaty revealed shortly after his arrival here in Australia that his three-pronged aim is to win at least 50 major medals, become the Usain Bolt of swimming and make some serious money.
Plainly, his sense of ambition wasn’t lost in the haze of jet lag, but the beauty of Peaty is that he always delivers on the big words, which will almost certainly be the case again at the Commonwealth Games this week.
Of all the English prospectors who have headed out to the Gold Coast, the 23-year-old has the best track record of finding what he is looking for.
The haul currently stands at 26 medals, including 17 breaststroke golds at Olympic, World and European championships in a staggering run since his breakthrough at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
in that interim period, he has gone almost four years unbeaten in the long course 100 metres, producing the 11 fastest times in history at the distance and he is a huge favourite to win the 50m title as well.
Given his sheer domination of the two disciplines, a pair of golds here are almost guaranteed and there are also possibilities of him entering the 200m and the 4 x 100m medley.
Peaty could therefore tick off as many as four more medals in his longer-term aim of a swimming half-century.
‘i’m on 26 senior medals now in four years so anything above 50 would be pretty good,’ he said.
‘That is a massive feat to achieve but that is what keeps me really motivated. You have to have something that is really up there to push yourself every day, particularly in the winter months.
‘i am obsessed with increasing my performance year on year.’
it has reached the point with Peaty that his breaststroke dominance has invited comparisons to Bolt, whose only defeat in a major final between 2008 and 2016 was due to a false start.
Peaty is some way short of that body of work, so a true side-by-side assessment is premature and Michael Phelps will always hold swimming’s sceptre by sheer force of numbers, versatility, profile and longevity.
But it is impossible to overstate the hold Peaty has on his favoured distance. Quite aside from a constant stream of golds in the 100m across the past four years, he has more than a full second of time on the field globally — a massive margin in any sprint. Phelps, it is said, was being genuine when he remarked at rio 2016 that he was glad not to share a discipline with Peaty.
As such, Peaty, even at this early stage, is dwelling over his legacy and the possibility that he could one day be viewed as ruthless destroyer in his sport much as Bolt was in his.
When asked about his legacy in the context of Bolt, he said: ‘i think when you keep winning and keep winning you have to think of legacy and it keeps you motivated. Legacy for me is really important. i would say that is a huge thing for me, to keep winning and secure that legacy.’
A part of that is tied to his belief that he can take his world record time for the 100m beneath 57 seconds — he calls it ‘Project 56’. His current mark stands at 57.13sec and he is convinced he will go beneath 57sec during this current Olympic cycle.
He said: ‘Does it happen at the Commonwealth Games now or does it happen in two years in Tokyo? it’s going to happen at some point, i know it is.
‘it would be like Bolt running 9.2sec or 9.3 in the 100m i guess. The rest of the world are still on 58.4sec and they haven’t been that fast for four years.’
not bad for a swimmer who refers to himself as ‘a ginger kid from Uttoxeter’, who makes a play on his working-class roots when declaring his remaining goals in the pool tie in with a wish to make as much money as possible.
‘There are external factors of finance — for your family, your family’s future,’ he said. ‘i didn’t come from a background with wealth or anything like that, like a lot of athletes. it does motivate me a lot more. But i think medals motivate me more than anything.’
He’s had no shortage of those.