“The greatest breastroke swim ever seen”
On Sunday evening, Adam Peaty swam into “uncharted waters”, said Liz Byrnes in the Daily
Mail. The 24-year-old British swimmer became the first man in history to complete the 100m breaststroke in less than 57 seconds: he clocked
56.88 secs in the semi-finals of the World Championships, shaving 0.22 secs off his own world record. Peaty couldn’t match that in the final itself, but the result was always a foregone conclusion: his time of 57.14 secs, more than a second ahead of everyone else, won him a third successive gold medal in the event. Then, two days later, he won his third straight gold in the 50m breaststroke too. Peaty was already more dominant in the 100m breaststroke than “any swimmer in any other event in history”, said Craig Lord in The Times. But his performance in the semis may well have been “the greatest breaststroke swim ever seen, and the finest in any event by a British swimmer”. No one else has swum the distance in less than 58 seconds, let alone 57. Peaty is so far ahead of everyone else that by the time he stops the clock, his closest competitor only “has his fingertips at Peaty’s toes”.
Peaty’s latest feat has been three years in the making, said Pippa Field in The Daily Telegraph. After taking gold in the 100m breaststroke at the 2016 Olympics, he was “hungry for more”. So he set his sights on breaking the 57-second barrier – an undertaking he dubbed “Project 56”. To achieve that, he worked tirelessly with scientists at British Swimming and the English Institute of Sport, making the most of their wizardry: he perfected the position of his face while he swims in order to limit drag on his head, and trained in a flume, the water moving so quickly that it would pin most swimmers against a wall. All that relentless work has well and truly paid off: Peaty remains “in an orbit all of his own”.