Adam Peaty likes speed. He likes fast cars and fast music. He is the quickest man in the world over 50 metres and 100m breaststroke and, ominously for the rest, Britain’s golden hope is swimming faster than ever. “I have just got back from Australia after six or seven weeks and the best long‑course training I have ever had,” says Peaty. “I’m pushing times I have never pushed before and I’m the fastest I’ve ever been.
“For 100m you have to go out fast but also bring it back, so we’ve been doing a lot of work on the back-end speed. We are looking at pretty fast times that I have been struggling to do in a race.”
Peaty will have the opportunity to test his new finish at the British Olympic trials in Glasgow from this week – when his place in GB’s team will almost certainly be assured – before the long journey to Rio enters its final few lengths. It has been some ride for a 21-year-old who lives at home with his parents in Uttoxeter, having made a name for himself at the Commonwealth Games in 2014 before a stellar performance at the world championships a year later.
He will return to Tollcross for the trials, the scene of his breakthrough two years ago. Back then, on a night when a partisan Scottish crowd were banking on Ross Murdoch to ride the feelgood wave of a heady home Games, Peaty recorded a British record of 58.94sec in the final, half a second quicker than Murdoch and 0.34 faster than South Africa’s Cameron van der Burgh.
It was evidence of Peaty’s promise and, 12 months later, the young lad who likes to bomb around in his Mercedes A45 – under the speed limit, he insists – made an even greater impression on the world stage. In Kazan, Peaty renewed a compelling rivalry with Van der Burgh and despite trailing for 99.5m of the 100m final, stretched and grasped to snatch a dramatic victory by 0.07. It was one of three gold medals he won at the championships.
“The more you believe in yourself, the faster you’re going to get,” says Peaty. “Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to set a time that nobody can touch for many years. Hopefully in eight years I can look back and think nobody is going to touch my time. I’ve never said that [target] time to anyone apart from my coach so I’m going to keep it that way, I never like to put time‑pressure on myself because you’ve got to think about the process first. You can easily say, ‘I can go 56’, but how are you going to do that?”
Peaty, who intends to race the 100m and 200m breaststroke in Brazil this year, speaks calmly and confidently about his future. The burgeoning expectation, he says, does not faze him and if his focus ever deviates, Mel Marshall is usually around for a word in the ear.
Peaty’s relationship with his coach is evidently a strong one and when the self-doubt occasionally creeps in, she is the one to whom he turns. Then there is mum and dad, who still wash his clothes and clean up after him but are regularly forbidden from talking about swimming.
“It’s pretty much like baking a cake: you have all these formulas, all these ingredients and if you take [away] a big chunk of that, you won’t get the same cake,” says Peaty. “The reason I live with my parents is because they have been a massive part of that ingredient to make that successful cake. If I move out, in an Olympic year, I have got too much stuff to think about: I have to wash my clothes.
“It sounds like first-world problems. I have to wash my clothes, do all this, clean up. I can do that but I don’t want to in an Olympic year as I want to put all my energy into racing well and giving it the best shot for my country. It’s easier to wait another year. It’s not a big problem, I love being at home with my dogs.
“You don’t see the final product, you only see the gold medals wrapped around your neck. The amount of effort it has taken, the amount of financial effort, all the time consumed that your parents have put in – as cringeworthy as it sounds, the medals should be around their necks.
“My mum worked on the other side of Stoke, I trained in Derby. That is a big journey. I would get up at 4am, my mum would drive me to the pool for 4.40am in Derby. She would wait for me for two hours, drive back, have some breakfast, then she would be in the house for 50 minutes, then work all day 8am to 5pm, God knows. Then come back to Derby, wait another two hours, collect me. She wouldn’t get home until 8pm or 10pm.”
Peaty’s 100m world record of 57.92, set in April last year, cut Van der Burgh’s previous record by a remarkable 0.54. He also set the 50m record at the world championships in Russia but even though the shorter distance is not an Olympic discipline, expectations that Peaty can lead a golden charge for Britain in the pool this summer are building. In the way remains Van der Burgh, the 2012 champion, and a formidable adversary.
“I get on with him,” says Peaty. “Like any great rivalry there is still that bit of competitiveness. Once the race is done you are great friends because you don’t have a race in front of you. Up to it, I think anyone is a bit tense. That is the way it is, the way sport is. It’s unpredictable. It can beat you down. But that is the way it is and there is no more to it.
“Cameron is a great guy, has some great morals. He is the Olympic champion. I know what he is capable of and that is why I have been doing the work ever since. I won the Commonwealths and the worlds as well. The Olympics, though, are a different ball game.”
Peaty says he is ready for the build-up, the hype and expectation. From unknown teenager to Olympic champion in a couple of years, it would be an ascent to make all those early morning trips to Derby worthwhile. Before then, though, are the British trials and a chance to make new waves and break old records.
“You come across the street and people just say things like, ‘Olympic gold’ and ‘How are you going to do it?’ You just have to tell them straight – it is not yours until it is actually physically around your neck. I am going to respect my opponents like great athletes do. You have to respect them because who knows what someone is going to do. I’m in a position where I have a good support team, good family and friends – and it is just two lengths of the pool.”
