The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Impressive Peaty powers to UK title Olympic champion threatens his own world record to win again in Sheffield
Adam Peaty registered the secondfastest 50 metres breaststroke time in history as he powered to the British title in Sheffield last night.
Peaty won the final in 26.48 seconds – a time just six hundredths of a second short of his own world-record mark in the non-Olympic event.
It was another impressive showing at Ponds Forge from the 22-year-old, who on Tuesday had won the 100m breaststroke – in which he also holds the world record (57.13secs), as well as the Olympic title – in 57.79secs, automatically sealing him a place at this summer’s Budapest World Championships.
Peaty, the reigning world champion over both distances, admitted after last night’s triumph he found it “extremely frustrating” not to have set a new world record, but emphasised he is targeting doing it at the Worlds in July having worked on his dive, which he regards as an area of weakness.
Pea ty said :“It was extremely frustrating for me, but at the end of the day, that is the sport – you are going to be playing with hundredths of a second.
“The ideal situation would have been 26.41secs, to post a world record, and then capitalise at the Worlds. But sport is not an ideal world.
“But I believe everything happens for a reason. I want to do it at the Worlds and I think I’m going to get the maximum effect when I do it there, to boost the team along.
“I don’t really go into a race thinking, ‘I’m worried about this guy, this guy is going to swim fast’. I’m thinking, ‘How far can we take the sport, how far can we take breaststroke?’
“I’m just going to go back to the drawing board now on that dive and see where we are going wrong.”
Peaty had given his 100m gold medal to a young boy in the crowd on Tuesday.
When asked if he was going to do something similar yesterday, he said: “That one will go back tonight to my Nan (who was watching from the crowd) – she will tell me off otherwise!”
Also yesterday, Peaty’s fellow Loughborough University swimmer Jocelyn Ulyett secured a World Championships spot for the first time as she finished ahead of Rio 2016 Olympic finalists Molly Renshaw and Chloe Tutton to win the 200m breaststroke title in a new British-record time of 2mins 22.08secs.
Georgia Davies, who has not been included for funding by British Swimming, put herself in contention as she posted a time meeting the ‘consideration’ criteria while winning the 100m backstroke title.
Olympic medallists Jazz Carlin, James Guy and Chris Walker-Hebborn won their 800m freestyle, 200m butterfly and 100m backstroke events respectively, although none of them swam ‘consideration’ times.