Team GB are still awaiting their first medal of the 2016 Games after swimmer Hannah Miley narrowly missed out on a bronze in the 400m individual medley, a race that will be remembered for the Hungarian Katinka Hosszu’s destruction of the world record. The 26-year-old Miley was edged into fourth place over the last couple of metres, maintaining her frustrating run of Olympic near misses.
The Scot had previously finished fifth and sixth in her two previous Games appearances and confessed to “a mixture of emotions” after seeing Hosszu romp away to claim the gold and obliterate the existing world record by more than two seconds. “It’s tough but that’s sport,” said Miley afterwards. “It’s very brutal. I can genuinely say I gave everything I had but it obviously wasn’t meant to be.”
Sheffield’s Max Litchfield, meanwhile, finished a gallant fourth in the individual medley behind Japan’s Kosuke Hagino, recording his second personal best of the day. James Guy also had his moments in the 400m freestyle final but ultimately finished sixth having led at the halfway stage.
It concluded a busy first day in the pool for British swimmers, with Adam Peaty breaking his own world record in the heats of the 100m breaststroke. Peaty’s time of 57.55 beat his previous best by 0.37 of a second and put him in pole position to become the first British man for 28 years to strike Olympic gold.
The 21-year-old was almost as quick in his semi-final, still buoyed by his spectacular Olympic debut race. “It feels good: 57.5 is not too shabby. I wasn’t even pumped up in the call room. But as soon as I walked in it was either fight or flight and I chose to actually get something out of it. You can either be shy of the arena or take advantage of it.
“Going down that first 50, I knew it was fast and I know I turned fast. But it wasn’t until 25 metres to go, the crowd started roaring and I thought: ‘There are no Brazilians in this lane so they’ve got to be shouting for something.’ Hopefully I’m going to move the record on even more and see what I’ve got. I want to inspire millions of kids out there who want to take up sport.”
His main rival, the former world record-holder Cameron Van der Burgh, conceded it had been an impressive swim but warned the competition is still far from over. “Tomorrow’s the big one,” said the South African. “That’s all we care about. The final is a different ball-game. You see guys smashing times in the semis and crumbling in finals.”
Australia’s Mack Horton, meanwhile, took gold in the 400m freestyle ahead of his rival Sun Yang of China. Horton had previously expressed his disapproval at the presence of the Chinese swimmer, who was handed a three-month retrospective ban for doping which he has still to serve, and pointedly ignored him after the race. Sun Yang tested positive for a heart booster in 2014 after the substance had been added to the banned list at the start of that year.
Horton also took exception to being splashed with water by Sun Yang during a warm-up in Rio. “He just splashed me to say ‘Hi’ and I ignored him because I don’t have time or respect for drug cheats. He wasn’t too happy about that so he kept splashing me and I just got in and did my thing.”
