Age no barrier as Peaty works towards new world record

BBC News

3 days ago

Adam Peaty says age will not be a barrier as he attempts to break his own world records in preparation for a gold-medal raid at the Los Angeles Olympics.The three-time Olympic champion would become the oldest British swimmer to win gold if he was to add another title to his hoard at the age of 33 in 2028.Peaty will be looking to reclaim the 100m breaststroke crown, having finished 0.02secs short of making it three successive gold medals in the event when he was pipped for glory in Paris last year.With the 50m breaststroke added to the schedule of sprint events in Los Angeles, Peaty says it will be "an exciting Games" for him as the world record holder over both distances."I'm going to try beat my world record along these next three years, just as a personal journey, but as you get older in these sprint events, you only get more experienced," he told BBC East Midlands Today."I want to show that just because you are older and just because people think you have reached your peak and are past your peak, that doesn't mean you can't win."You just need one good swim, and I'm clutching on to that. And hopefully we've got a lot more than just one good swim."
Peaty had previously admitted he was not convinced he would carry on competing after an emotionally and physically draining silver-medal finish at Paris 2024.But the multiple world, Olympic, European and Commonwealth Games gold medal winner now talks of "unfinished business" at the Games, having ended up in second place despite catching Covid-19."I finished that race and even though I was happy and felt I had a great performance, it wasn't enough for me to have that as my last race or one of my last races," he said."I prepared for Paris and didn't get what I wanted, so I have that in the back of my mind now. And sometimes you need that fuel, you need a loss to appreciate it and go for the win next time."That's not going to define who I am for my whole career. I just know there is so much more in there."Discovering what sort of swimmer he can be at 30 is something Peaty is doing with new coach Jamie Main at his new training base at Repton School in Derbyshire.His decision to leave Aquatic GB's performance centre at Loughborough University came after his long-time coach Mel Marshall decided to take a job in Australia."I was fortunate enough to have Mel as my coach for the last 15 years," Peaty said."We pioneered things, broke world records and won all these golds, and almost rewrote that stroke in terms of sprint breaststroke, which is incredible."But now the real challenge for me comes from growing in certain aspects of accountability, learning how to do it as an adult, how to do it as a father, how to do it faster. "Also working with Jamie and the coaches at Repton, with all the facilities here, how can we do it in the way we most love and in a way we thrive every single day?"It's a very different campaign, a very different mission this time around."
'Training smarter not harder'
It is a mission that has started with Peaty being omitted from the group of 57 elite British swimmers being supported by Aquatics GB throughout 2025.He has taken a break from competition, and while his rivals and compatriots are in Singapore for the World Aquatics Championships, he talks of being in "pre-season" and juggling a family holiday to Disney, planning his wedding with fiancée Holly Ramsay and training for his triathlon debut at the T100 in London next month.Peaty's first real competitive focus after that will be the Aquatics GB Swimming Championships in London in April 2026 where he aims to qualify for next year's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the European Championships in Paris."For my whole career, the past 20 years, it's been 'let's go hard and see what we get'. Go as fast as we can and hard as we can," Peaty said. "Beat the body down, then taper it and rest it so when you perform, you are going to swim out of your skin."We still need that and we still need to work extremely hard, but now it's a little bit more clever around my age."My recovery time is a little bit slower, but also at the moment my risk to injury is a little bit higher as well because I'm so busy doing everything else."There is no magic way to do anything as you get older, you just have to be a little bit smarter around the training and know that you can't be every single day at the wall because it's not how I want to train anymore. I want to train smarter."