Peaty the peerless
Yet another gold medal to add to his record haul, and still he’s not happy
For four years, chasing down Adam Peaty has been an exercise Sisyphean in its futility. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus rolled a boulder up a mountain for his eternal punishment, and every time, it came crashing back down.
Here was the swimming equivalent: South Africa’s Cameron van der Burgh leapt further and faster into the Gold Coast pool than a ravenous crocodile, but still Peaty surged past to win by more than half a second. It is reaching the point where any compassionate selector should tell those contemplating the 100metres breaststroke to find, for their own sanity, another career.
Peaty completed his cycle yesterday, tying up an unbroken golden thread from his last Commonwealth triumph at Glasgow 2014 to these Games beside the Queensland surf. He is the Edwin Moses of his sport, such is his unanswerable dominance, but where Moses could claim to be unbeaten in the 400 m hurdles over almost 10 years and 122 races, from 1977 to 1987, Peaty, as is his wont, already covets more, talking openly of continuing until the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
Fourteen years unvanquished? It is barely conceivable in swimming, where the best can flame out before some of their peers have even applied for a first full-time job. Rebecca Adlington, after all, retired at 23. Peaty, though, is cut from different cloth, restless in his quest to produce feats to be remembered decades beyond his time. He remains wedded, for example, to ‘Project 56’, a plan to improve his already eye-watering world record by dipping under 57 seconds. While he was far off that mark this time, taking victory in 58.84sec – as against 57.13 in Rio two years ago – his appetite for creating history is all-consuming.
Reminded about his promise to press on until 2028, Peaty said: “It makes me want to sit down and take a deep breath, but I think I can do it. The greater worry is how can I keep the sport fresh and my motivation high. I was nowhere near my best here.” Looking over to his friend, Steve Parry, himself a former Commonwealth medallist in butterfly, he added: “Steve just told me, ‘You don’t look happy’. That’s because I don’t feel I’m like the rest of the swimmers. At the touch, I think, ‘Oh my God, I’ve won gold’, but then I look at the time and feel, ‘That’s not the best version of myself ’. I’m obsessed with self-improvement.”
It was ever thus for Peaty, since a once-carefree teenager prepared to head out for a night on the tiles in Derby, only to receive a text message that would change his life. It informed him that Craig Benson, a fellow Briton he had beaten for fun in the age groups, was about to line up at the London Olympics. Peaty realised that he needed to make swimming his vocation, and to take it seriously. From that epiphany, he has never relented, cementing such a stranglehold on his event that he boasts the fastest 11 times in history, a distinction not even Usain Bolt could claim.
Even by swimming’s standards, he is a remarkable specimen, with shoulders that would make a caber-tosser blanch: the result of his “flying press-ups”, which he performs in sets of 20 four times a day, not to mention his average daily calorie intake of 8,000. No one has been more unstinting in the pursuit of perfection, which would illustrate why he reacted so mutedly to this latest gold, which he took by 0.56sec from English compatriot James Wilby.
“My stroke feels nowhere near what it should be,” Peaty said. “I have to go back to the drawing board to see what worked late last year and to work out how I can improve this summer.
“That’s the first time ever where I have not felt in control of my race. I think that I let the event get to me. I was cramping up with 15 metres to go. That never usually happens. For some reason, I’m not performing on the back half as I should. I’m taking too many strokes. What made me so good in Rio is that I was focusing only on the process. It’s half-mental, half-technical.”
It is a deathly word among athletes, “process”, but year upon year of accomplishment at Peaty’s rarefied level demands an ascetic devotion to one’s craft. The 5am training sessions spent fixated on a black line at the bottom of a pool drove even Michael Phelps to an extended sabbatical, and Peaty is wary of succumbing to the same ennui.
“Yeah, a few beers are in order just to keep me sane,” he said. “I’m sure even Ed Moses switched off and spent time with his friends. Last season, I stopped enjoying it as I did a couple of years ago. Going into the 50m next, I’ll try to rediscover the enjoyment and be grateful for where I am.” At the Gold Coast Aquatics Centre, a stunning open-air amphitheatre full to capacity every session with Australian home support, Peaty had plenty of reasons for gratitude, especially as this was only his third long-course swim of 2018.
For his rivals, the outlook was bleaker. Van der Burgh, stoic and one of the finest breaststrokers of all time, has wondered aloud if he should retire in resignation at Peaty’s supremacy. Wilby, a distant second, shrugged: “He’s only human, so you have to believe he can be beaten.” He uttered the words more in hope than expectation.
With 26 major titles and counting, Peaty is breaststroke’s nonpareil, a force so irresistible even Phelps once said he was relieved not to have to face him. As it stands, the only battle left for this half-man, half-dolphin, to fight is with himself.
‘The worry is how can I keep the sport fresh. I don’t feel I’m like the rest. I was nowhere near my best here’