Britain’s Olympic superstar
When a British Olympian goes for gold, it tends to be a “nail-biting affair”, said Daniel Schofield in The Daily Telegraph. But on Sunday, the result of the men’s 100m breaststroke was never in doubt. Having broken his own world record in the heats, Adam Peaty smashed it again: his time of 57.13 seconds took another 0.42 seconds off the record. “He may as well have been swimming on his own,” said Tom Fordyce in BBC Sport online. In an event usually decided by the narrowest of margins, the 21-year-old finished a second and a half ahead of anyone else. Coming 28 years after a British male swimmer last won gold, it was “one of the great displays in British Olympic history”.
Peaty wasn’t always so comfortable in the pool, said Andy Bull in The Guardian. As a child, growing up in Staffordshire, he was actually scared of water. He eventually overcame that to become a promising teenage swimmer, but lacked dedication – and in 2012, he didn’t come close to making the Olympic team. Watching his friend Craig Benson compete in that tournament, however, Peaty realised what he was missing out on, and he decided to “marry his incredible talent” to an “intense commitment to training”. Peaty went to extraordinary lengths to prepare for Rio, said Sarah Rainey in the Daily Mail. He built up his strength by flipping tractor tyres; every day, he did at least 60 “flying” press-ups, pushing himself off the ground so his hands and feet lifted off the floor. In his “most brutal” training sessions, Peaty did a series of 50m sprints, with such short recovery times that he was at his maximum heart rate for every length. Incredibly, he did that without access to an Olympic-size, 50m pool: over the past year he trained in 25m pools, often sharing a lane. That hasn’t held Peaty back, and he will only improve: by the Tokyo Olympics, in 2020, he should be at his peak.
At 22, Tom Daley is just a year older than Peaty, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. Yet he already feels like one of Team GB’S “elder statesmen”. On Monday, he became the first British diver to win multiple Olympic medals when he and Daniel Goodfellow took bronze in the men’s synchronised 10m platform. For Daley, it was “sporting vindication”, said Barney Ronay in The Guardian. It’s easy to be distracted by his “televisual burnish and celebrity six-pack”. But in an era of Chinese dominance of the sport, he is a “bona fide diving heavyweight”. He has struck up “an unusually tight bond” with Goodfellow, a 19-year-old Olympic debutant: Goodfellow even moved in with Daley, who cooked him breakfast each morning. The pair demonstrated their “plunging synchronicity” with their final dive, a stunning three-and-a-half somersault – and celebrated by plunging into the shallows, arm in arm.
To The Independent
Michael Silverleaf is wrong if he thinks Jeremy Corbyn only preaches to and enthuses the converted. I have felt disenfranchised for most of my adult life as there was no party I wished to vote for. There seemed to me not a cigarette paper between the Conservative and Labour parties. Now Corbyn has given me, and many like me, new hope for a change for the better in British politics.
The Establishment and its mouthpiece, the media, have not liked this from day one of Corbyn’s leadership and have campaigned against him. But we are still hopeful for change, despite the naysayers, and I am hopeful that my voice can at last count in the democracy of this country. Angela Elliott, Hundleby, Lincolnshire