Adam Peaty has bucked an age-old sporting trend: his swimming supremacy never gets old.
Sustained sporting domination from one individual or team, especially over a period of years, usually becomes arduous for neutral fans. However that doesn’t seem to apply in the men’s individual 100m breaststroke, which the Brit has dominated for years.
He is a double individual Olympic champion, has broken the world record five times, and has won all three world titles since 2015. In the relays, his amazing splits have helped Team GB to gold medal in the 4x100m mixed and to silver in the 4x100m men's relays at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Perhaps the most revealing statistic came in June 2021 at the British Swimming Olympic Trials. Despite having already qualified for the Games in Japan, the 26-year-old found it within himself to swim a blisteringly quick 57.39 seconds and momentarily secure the top-20 fastest times over the distance ever.
Peaty’s domination continually thrills audiences world-wide. He refuses to settle for winning races. Every time he takes to the water, viewers are on the edge of their seats, asking the same exciting questions: Will he break another world record? How does he keep getting better? What does he do differently to his rivals?
To answer these questions, Olympics.com spoke to Peaty and three former men’s 100m breaststroke world record holders in Steve Lundquist, Brendan Hansen and Cameron van der Burgh. The former champions discuss what it takes to be the best, the impact Peaty has had on the sport, and the possibility of him swimming a 55-second time.
(2021 Getty Images)
The importance of manipulating mindset
World-leading athletes often speak about the importance of having a key rival. Someone who motivates them to work harder behind closed doors in training. Someone who helps elevate their levels of performance in order to stay on top.
With all due respect to his competition, Peaty’s rare talent means that he has never benefited from having such a rival. While Dutchman Arno Kamminga’s 57.90 swim (which ended Peaty’s top-20 sequence) and Michael Andrew’s American record earlier this year show that victory will be anything but a foregone conclusion in the 100m breast at the Tokyo Olympics, Peaty has been largely unchallenged for almost a decade.
Instead, the Brit finds his motivation from within.
“I'd say I'm probably 70 percent driven by emotion, 30 percent data,” Peaty told Olympics.com. “Emotion is so important. If you can manipulate your emotion, you can create a fight or flight mindset with lots of adrenaline and I think you can become something that data will never provide. Data is just numbers, it’s boring for me. If you can find the right emotion and the right amount of emotion, then you'll be coming out very successfully.”
The point of finding the ‘right emotion’ is vital. Peaty gets a boost by swimming with a little anger or passion, but too much and he loses the ability to think clearly during a race.
“When I’m in the zone, I can read my muscles very well,” he continued. “I can read and focus on the race very well, it’s all in parallel focus and very accurate, precise, but I’ll also be able to respond, not react. If you respond to everything, you are in control, but if you react, then you let emotion take over, which isn't always a good thing.”
Adam Peaty’s closest competitor
The closest semblance to a rival Peaty ever had is Cameron van der Burgh.
The now-retired South African won the 100m breast Olympic gold at London 2012 with a world record time of 58.46. Like Peaty, he spent a large part of his career unchallenged and saw mindset as his main tool in ensuring that he kept swimming faster.
“For me it was always a bonus to be the fastest man but not my main focus,” van der Burgh told Olympics.com. “I always went out and focused on myself to perform at the limit of my mind and body.”
Towards the end of his career, the pair clashed fairly frequently. Peaty won the majority of their races over 100m, breaking van der Bergh’s world record in 2015 before winning the Rio 2016 Olympic final. But the South African had more success over 50m, out-touching his opponent in both the 2014 and 2018 Commonwealth Games finals.
It was an intriguing clash of different styles, with van der Bergh’s tall, lean physique in stark contrast to the explosive, muscle-bound Englishman.
“I think Adam brought a new style of breaststroke that is the new standard,” he continued. “He uses a fast stroke which takes some training adjustments, but you can see it is now being implemented in many young swimmers today.”
(2021 Getty Images)
Reinventing a stroke
Breaststroke is often regarded as one of the more difficult techniques to master.
This is mainly due to the fact that movements are slower than in other strokes, meaning that there is even less room for error.
“Breaststroke is about minimising stoppage,” two-time Olympic gold medallist Steve Lundqist explained to Olympics.com. “That means pulling your legs up with minimal drag underwater. Breaststroke is a feel stroke and I think it requires the most coordination. It really shows inefficiencies in a large way.”
For these reasons, it was previously thought that longer, taller athletes like van der Burgh had a natural advantage.
But in the same way that Usain Bolt changed traditional thinking on what the ideal shape for a 100m sprinter was, Peaty successfully implemented a new power-based technique, which has now become the golden standard.
“Peaty’s got it all,” Lundqist continued. “He's strong, he's got the stroke, he minimises drag. That's what you have to do.”
(2021 Getty Images)
He's the dominator, he has the same aura of Michael Phelps in the 200m fly back in the day. - Steve Lundquist on Adam Peaty
Away from body-mechanics, Peaty’s exploits have had an even more important effect on breaststroke.
His new energetic style combined with his record-breaking exploits and inked-up physique have breathed new life into a stroke that had become used to playing second-fiddle to freestyle and butterfly.
“As a slower stroke, it's usually not that fun to watch,” Lundquist continued. “But Adam is fun as heck to watch, he is nuts! I was always a fan of the sport, but he brought me back into it.
“He's the dominator, he has the same aura of Michael Phelps in the 200m fly back in the day. He has figured out a way to swim the race like no one else ever has.”
While Phelps has been the main attraction in swimming for the past four Olympics, van der Burgh believes the current crop of stars have done more than enough to fill that sizeable void in Tokyo.
“After Phelps we needed some new stars,” he said of the 23-time Olympic gold medallist. “I think between Peaty, (Caeleb) Dressel, and (Katie) Ledecky, they have got people talking about swimming again.”
(2021 Getty Images)
But it is unlikely that Peaty, currently in the form of his life, will fully appreciate the full effects of his career for some time.
The first time Brendan Hansen managed to break the 60-second mark also saw him break the world record. He clocked a 59.30 in 2004, before lowering that mark to 59.13 two years later and suggested that the magnitude of the incumbent record holder’s achievements will likely only be felt by the man himself once he retires.
“When I broke the minute barrier for the first time it was just really cool to see four numbers representing my time rather than five,” the American told Olympics.com. “To this day it still is a very big barrier for breaststrokers.
“But when you are in the moment, you are just excited to accomplish what you set out to do. I don’t think people like Peaty dwell on the accomplishment as much as how he can swim even faster next time. Processing those two things was not something I did well. It’s only now, watching swimming and being a fan, that I truly understand what I did.”
(2021 Getty Images)
Smashing historic milestones
Peaty’s domination started at the 2015 British Championships, where he broke the 100m breaststroke record for the first time. More significantly, he became the first swimmer ever to break into the 57-second barrier, clocking 57.92.
From 2016 to 2018, he lowered the mark another three times to 57.10. Peaty was now on the verge of breaking into the previously unthinkable 56-second bracket.
At the 2019 World Championships, not only did he achieve his goal, but he did it with ease. His time of 56.88 in the semi-final redefined once again what a human is capable of.
(2021 Getty Images)
Lundqist also broke the 100m breaststroke five times from 1982-1984. Like Peaty, he found that chasing a major milestone - in his case trying to become the first swimmer to break one minute - gave him even more motivation than the desire to beat one other rival ever could.
“The reason I wanted to keep going at it is because I wanted to break a minute,” the Atlanta native told Olympics.com. “That was my goal. I came close, but didn’t quite manage it.”
While technique, mindset and genetics have played a large part in Peaty’s world record success, Lundquist points out that technology has also improved.
“The blocks have changed since my day,” he said. “The pool salinity has changed, swimsuits have changed, but that’s just normal progression. Modern swimmers have better nutrition skills where ours were nonexistent! We ate as many calories as we could. We also overtrained, whereas today they understand things like recovery better.
“But let me also say that Peaty is just a better swimmer. He doesn’t seem to have a weakness and is undoubtedly the best raw athlete we have ever seen before.”
(2021 Getty Images)
Can Peaty swim a 55-second time?
Peaty makes no secret of the power a crowd can bring him. He broke the world record twice at the Rio 2016 Olympics and usually swims his best times in the biggest stadiums. He didn't manage that feat in Tokyo where he became the first British swimmer to defend his Olympic title in 57.37.
All three former world-record holders were in unison with their assessment that it was always going to be a tough ask given the lack of a crowd due to coronavirus-safety precautions.
“It was difficult because of the chaos that was the COVID year,” Hansen offered. “The inconsistency in training across the world is going to make it tough for such a large jump.”
“They peak for the big events, so there’s a chance,” Lundquist said. “If it was a big audience, I think he would do a fifty five, I guarantee it.”
Van der Burgh echoed that sentiment, saying, “It is possible, but I don’t think it’ll happen just yet.”
(2021 Getty Images)
Peaty undoubtedly had other ideas.
While he didn’t have the power of the crowd to spur him on this time, he had other energy sources to tap into.
In September 2020 he became a father for the first time, and his desire to make his family proud provides all the motivation he needs.
“I don’t really go out there for myself, not anymore anyway,” Peaty continued. “I go out there for my son, I go out there for my family, I go out for the people that support me. And most importantly at an Olympics, you go out there for your country.
“I will carry something in my jacket one hundred percent (relating to his son, George) because it's just a comforting feeling, but also that when I get home, I’ll give it to him knowing that it's been to Tokyo in an Olympic final.
“I think I’ll just keep pushing what is possible, be better than yesterday, keep improving and that's it, really.”
While Peaty did not break the 55-second-barrier in Tokyo, the message is clear, the goal is simple: Peaty isn't finished setting milestones yet.
(2021 Getty Images)
