This injury is making me hungrier I want more records, ,more titles.
Adam Peaty is battling to be fit for the Commonwealth Games. But regardless, the swim star says he’ll keep making waves
IT WAs the mundanity behind the drama that still nibbles at Adam Peaty. The unremarkable way in which a remarkable athlete was fished from his kingdom and dumped somewhere dry, hard and unfamiliar.
‘I’ve never had an injury before, not once, and to get one like this was, well, pretty rubbish,’ he tells Sportsmail.
‘I was training in Tenerife, doing some side lunges, one of the simplest moves you can do. I had a band around me to counteract the movement, help the muscles get stronger and all that, and I just went over on my foot.
‘I have rolled a lot of ankles, so I thought it was a sprain, but I went for an X-ray and they said it was a broken foot. Not great.’
He puffs out his cheeks and contemplates how he, the most irresistible force in British sport, became quite such a slow-moving object.
It is to do with the protective boot that has lived on his right foot since that incident in May; a boot that has felt like a ball and chain at a point when plans are being hastily reconfigured.
The injury has already cost him a place at the recent world championships, taking with it the possibility, and indeed the extreme likelihood, of a fourth successive breaststroke double of 50m and 100m golds.
But the deeper concern is what it might yet mean for his place at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, just 45 minutes from where he grew up in Uttoxeter. ‘I really want to be there,’ he says. ‘How many chances do you have for a home championships?’
For a man who has broken 14 world records across eight years, this is one clock that is putting up a good fight. The Games start on July 28 and by Peaty’s reckoning he is only ‘80 per cent’ sure he can pull it off.
As he puts it: ‘We live between what each scan says now. For Birmingham, I will have only been out of the boot for four weeks. It is not a long time to get properly ready for a championship at all, but if anyone can do it, I can do it.’
The wiring within the greats is always interesting — it is that mechanism built via necessity to see the good things in the bad. Peaty is new to those contortions of psychology, but he is giving it a go. He isn’t in his most ebullient mood when we speak — he is marvellously bullish and introspective, as usual, and yet he is also a little flat; compelling in his honesty and yet unconvinced that strong thoughts can trump a fracture and a tight schedule.
Maybe there is a broader clue in that about how this battle will play out. At the very least he provides a window into what makes this most captivating of competitors tick.
‘You have to adjust your thinking,’ he says. ‘I’m not the most patient person. I am an athlete, I want to be the fastest in the world, and there is something stopping me right now. I want to rush it but I can’t. I just can’t.
‘It took some getting used to. But you have to use it for you. OK, so part of that is I have been doing what I can and building where possible. I have done a lot of kayaking as it is a similar movement, and I am swimming without my legs at the moment, so if anything my arms are getting stronger. Good. If anything I am getting fitter.
‘The biggest positive for anyone in this situation is having time for perspective. Anyone can relate to this — if you do the same thing for multiple years, and I have been doing this for 17 years really without injury or a long break, you get a new perspective. Mine is that I really want to do this correctly. I really want to get fitter and stronger and better and dominate. Also good.
‘ When you choose to do something, the emotion is different from when it is taken away from you, such as the world championships. The emotion is that I am angry to miss it, but I have had a lot more drive pumped into me by this. I try to believe everything happens for a reason and this unfortunate thing is already making me hungrier. You find silver linings.’
It is quite an outlook, even if silver linings are somewhat alien to a swimmer whose career and life has been defined by another shade. Peaty stands apart from most within the elite of British sport for the scale of his dominance of breaststroke sprints since 2014, with three Olympic gold medals, a further eight at the worlds, and 20 across European and Commonwealth level.
Prior to the Tokyo Olympics he spoke of feeling like ‘a god’ on his walk to a competition pool.
The fascinating part is how he achieves and maintains that confidence. Or rather it is how he uses doubts and neuroses and the sheer terror of losing to reach such a head space.
On that score it is revealing to hear him speak with both irritation and fondness of his last major defeat, in the 50m final at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia.
‘I remember 2018 well,’ he says. ‘I had won the 100m and wasn’t happy.
I was on track to go very fast and I went 1.5sec slower. I invested all that time and didn’t get near it and it annoyed me.
‘Then in the 50m I just felt weak. I am now glad it happened. You need those learning curves. But I was angry. Maybe I still am. It was the day I lost. It is a scar in the memory. I think defeats are the most valuable experience you can have.
‘You know, doubt is a very useful tool to train with if you can control it. It is when it spirals out of control that it is dangerous. Doubt suppresses complacency and complacency is what takes athletes from good to not so good. If you can avoid complacency you can be successful for a long time, if you have all the other traits. Doubt is very useful for getting rid of that.
‘Doubt is something I will write about in a few years. It is not that I doubt my ability, it is almost a slight thought that, “If I don’t do this I will get beaten”, or “If I don’t eat this meal, I will lose”.
‘I have lived for a very long time being very binary in my thinking — this will make me faster, this will make me slower, so if I don’t do that I might lose. It is a very weird way of thinking but it works. It is all about fear of losing. We all have that at the top of the game.’
With Peaty turning 28 this year, the mystery is how long he will choose to stay there. To continue
the grind of a punishing training cycle. To torment himself into believing the chasing pack is closer than any time sheet would otherwise indicate. To give barely a fortnight of each year to time away from the pool.
Paris 2024 is already prominent in his thoughts and the 2028 Games remain a possibility. Had this injury not occurred, Peaty’s belief is that he would have been close to record shape, having taken an extended break following the Tokyo Olympics, which he occupied with his appearance on Strictly Come Dancing.
‘Prior to this injury, I was feeling really good,’ he says, reflecting on a break from his rehabilitation at a sponsor gig for Cupra. ‘I had that time off swimming, even if most of it was on TV. It was a long time where I could finally sit and think.
‘Post- Olympics is always a low state of mind because that investment across several years pays off in a day or two and recalibrating is hard. After Rio, I’ve spoken a lot about how I found it hard. The Olympic blues. I had trained for seven years and had no idea what to do next and just ended up partying.
‘After Tokyo it was better because I had the experience and structure in place to deal with it. There wasn’t much partying, just business.
‘ Strictly was a very good experience for me, even if I only got 19 points out of 40. I enjoyed it. It was exhausting in its own way but I am glad I did it. I came back from that ready to swim and win.’ There is surely little left for him to achieve, beyond a win in a home championships set against the backdrop of almost no proper training.
‘The answer for what I want is simple,’ he says. ‘I always want more.’ It is at this point in the conversation that Peaty fully comes alive. ‘I invest my whole life into this. There will never be enough.
‘If you are the top 0.01 per cent in the world, then you will you have something different about you — that is drive and ambition. For me, having those world titles doesn’t mean I didn’t want more this year.
‘That is part of who I am and what moulds me. To see those titles go to someone else hurts, but believe me, I will use that. That will drive me on to Paris and beyond. I want more world records, more world titles.
‘The day it is enough is the day I retire. I haven’t had enough yet.’
Adam Peaty drives the CUPRA Formentor, the high-performance coupe crossover SUV. For more info visit www.cupraofficial.co.uk