The Aqua Man

No one can get close to Adam Peaty in the pool. The British breaststroke specialist does things mere mortals shouldn’t be able to do, breaking records and amassing silverware at a pace few athletes could ever hope to match. The 23-year-old is clear on why he’s able to leave the pack behind: he’s sought out his biggest strength. And made it a weapon

At a private pool in London’s Canary Wharf, Adam Peaty is scudding through the water like a human torpedo. For most swimmers, the breaststroke is a lazy paddle deployed at beaches and pool parties, but Peaty has weaponised the style. His size 12 feet and hyper-flexible legs thrash like whirling propellers, while his 38cm biceps and 117cm chest pump waves past his body with ruthless, mechanised power.

Up close, it’s a devastating spectacle of athletic aggression. But Peaty’s physical strength is matched by an equally potent mental game-plan: to identify your best talent, then push it to new limits. That’s why his left arm is tattooed with images of a roaring lion and Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea: warrior-like symbols that represent his fearless hunt for world domination and sporting immortality.

Peaty is the Usain Bolt of the swimming world – a superhuman talent whose record-shattering speeds are redefining the limits of human potential. The Olympic 100m breaststroke champion and winner of five world titles, he has already broken the world record for the 100m breaststroke four times, most recently at the European Championships in August, when he produced a stunning new record time of 57.10s. He has now made more time gains in just over three years than all other athletes had managed in the previous nine. Amazingly, Peaty’s winning margins are double those of Bolt at his recordbreaking peak (see page 57). The 23-year-old boasts the 12 fastest 100m times in history and hasn’t lost in the event in four years. Not content with dominating his signature 100m event, he has also slashed the 50m breaststroke record (now 25.95s) four times.

“For the first 50m of a 100m race, you feel like you’re flying,” explains Peaty, pausing for a rest, his chest still heaving from the effort. “At the Olympics, I got a massive adrenalin rush that delayed the pain, and then, oh my God, it hit me. But in the World Championships it was like someone was crushing my legs and taking a crowbar to my biceps, triceps and forearms. I’m used to pain, because I go through it every day. But if a normal person experienced that volume of lactic acid [the substance released into your bloodstream during intense exercise, which triggers burning pain] they would pretty much die because their body isn’t used to flushing it out.”

Nobody could have predicted Peaty’s success. Growing up in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, the youngest of four, he was terrified of water. “My brothers told me sharks could swim through the plughole, so I hated even having a bath,” he recalls. “My first memory of swimming was just trying not to drown. But I started to mess around with my mates and enjoy it.”

Before succeeding as a swimmer, though, Peaty had to abandon his big childhood dream. “I wanted to be a fighter pilot,” he says. “I was obsessed with speed and history, and I loved World War II flight battles. I wanted to shift all that into a career. But I’m too tall [1.9m] to be a pilot, so I would have maybe joined the Royal Marines.”

However, by broadening his perspective and keeping his mind open to new ideas, Peaty found a way to channel his military ambitions into sport. “Swimming has a lot of similarities: speed, selfimprovement, discipline. And, just like in the military, I get to push my limits every day.”

Peaty wasn’t blessed with talent in every sport. Ask him why he got into swimming and he laughs, “I wasn’t good at anything else.” He liked running, but wasn’t especially fast. “I’m all or nothing,” he says. “If I’m not the best, I won’t carry on. It was the same with running or playing Monopoly: if I lost, I would wipe the board. But when you find something you’re good at, you can use that drive in a positive way.”

Even within the swimming world, it took Peaty a while to identify his talents. When he had a trial at the City of Derby Swimming Club, coach Mel Marshall was appalled: “She wanted to chuck me out of the pool because my freestyle technique was so bad.” But when Marshall saw him swim breaststroke, she thought, “Bloody hell, this kid is good.” It was a pivotal moment: Peaty realised he needed to work with his genuine strengths, not chase empty dreams. “You have to weigh up your options and choose your path. I wouldn’t be good at other strokes. Breaststroke is my forte, so I put everything into that.”

Peaty was scared of having a bath as a child – his brothers had told him sharks swam up through the plughole

Peaty began training with Marshall in Derby before and after school, which involved grim 4am wake-up calls and endless 40-minute drives for his mum. But when he was 17, he saw fellow British breaststroke swimmer Craig Benson reach the semi-finals at the 2012 London Olympics. “I had been messing around in a field with my mates the night before, and I thought, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ It was time to step on the gas.”

Armed with a clear vision of his future path and an authentic example to follow, Peaty began to train harder, eat healthier and think smarter. “Anyone looking to be the best at whatever they do has to be obsessed with self-improvement,” he says, “Every day, I think, ‘This meal, workout or decision will make me faster or slower.’ I always choose faster.”

Peaty’s new commitment and determination earned quick rewards. In 2014 he made his breakthrough, beating South Africa’s Cameron van der Burgh, the Olympic champion, in the 100m at the Commonwealth Games. He earned four gold medals at the 2014 European Championships and set his first world record in the 50m. In April 2015 he set his first 100m world record, before picking up three gold medals at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships.

After his 100m gold at Rio 2016, Peaty also produced some comic-book heroics in the second leg of the 4x100m medley relay, when he gobbled up a two-second deficit to go from last to half a second ahead, inspiring Britain to a silver medal. Afterwards, the USA’s 23-time Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps walked over and said what the rest of the world was thinking: “What the fuck, man?” The new superstar could have bathed in his success, but instead he chose to push even harder. “It was no longer about winning, but about how long I could dominate for,” Peaty says. Upgrading his goals yielded spectacular results. At the 2017 World Aquatics Championships, Peaty took the 100m by 1.32s and the 50m by 0.53s – miraculous margins in a sport usually won by the length of a fingernail.

In person, Peaty is far from the robotic zealot his superhuman performances might lead you to expect. He refuses to let his confidence slip into arrogance; he’s polite and friendly company, quick to descend into boyish chuckles. He makes self-deprecating jokes about how his gran is more famous than him (his nan Mavis became a social media star for her tweets during Rio 2016). And, despite having dedicated thousands of hours to winning in the water, at the 2017 European Short Course Swimming Championships in Copenhagen he handed his gold medal to a shell-shocked young girl: “Giving away my medal might inspire someone for years to come. That’s much better than leaving it on a shelf.”

The self-confessed obsessive is actually also a fan of quality downtime. Peaty believes his other loves inject valuable perspective after endless laps of the pool. He relaxes with box sets ranging from US dramas (Ballers, Billions) to comedy (Silicon Valley, Modern Family). He listens to grime, hip-hop, house and rock, from Jaykae, Tory Lanez and Post Malone to Metallica and Architects. He’s also a passionate petrolhead, and talks excitedly about his Mercedes C63 S. “My dream car changes every month,” Peaty says. “It was a [Ferrari] 488 GTB, but now I’m swaying towards a [Lamborghini] Aventador.”

It needn’t be a pipe dream, with more success on the immediate horizon. After another successful 2018 season, winning four gold medals at the European Championships, Peaty is due to return to the international stage for the World Swimming Championships in China in December. “The Worlds are ‘short course’ this year [held in a 25m pool, not the standard 50m ‘long course’] which we don’t take as seriously but I still try to win. But by January and the new long-course season, I’m going to be fully firing. With Tokyo 2020 on the horizon, I’m all in.”

His rivals are so desperate to learn his secrets before the Olympics that some countries have even started filming Peaty at races. “They sit in front of me with a camera,” he laughs. “It’s normally China or Japan. You see it in the pool as well, with underwater mirrors and cameras. America did it. It’s a compliment, I suppose.”

But Peaty has unique physical gifts that no amount of video analysis can teach. He has hyperflexible, double-jointed knees that inject extra power into his kick. “I can get hyper-extension in my knee so I can whip out more power when I kick,” he says. “If you can keep the top half of your legs, your quads, quite narrow and whip your lower legs back, you’re more streamlined, so I can generate more power without exposing myself to drag.”

While other breaststroke swimmers kick like a frog, Peaty performs a squat-like thrust. That’s why his rivals can manage 55 strokes per minute while Peaty can unleash 58-60. “Most people have a wide, slow kick, but mine is narrow and fast,” he says. “Not many people can get to my stroke rate, but I can’t get to their stroke rate at backstroke or freestyle. Your gifts don’t mean anything unless you point them in the right direction.”

This is a key theme for Peaty: he doesn’t rely on his strengths, he enhances them. Under the tutelage of Marshall, he trains for 35 hours a week, swimming more than 11km a day (with Sundays off). In the gym, you’ll find him performing 150kg squats and 130kg bench presses or flipping heavy tractor tyres. “I like pushing the limits of the body,” he says. To fuel his brutal training, he eats 6,000 calories a day – more than double that of the average man.

Peaty’s enviable skills have won him deals with big-name brands such as Omega, and left him in an almost unique sporting situation where his biggest rival is himself. While his opponents are still trying to swim the 100m in under 58s, Peaty has launched ‘Project 56’ – a personal mission to dip under 57s. This isn’t a deluded dream but a targeted psychological strategy to extract more out of himself. As Marshall has said, “He’s a lion. You have to put the meat in front of him for him to go and hunt.”

Peaty knows that to keep progressing he needs new challenges – and sometimes that means being better than he was yesterday. “When you’re second, you have something to chase, so I have to change my mindset to feel that fire again,” he says. “There will be a time when no one on Earth can get faster, because you’ll hit that point where the drag and resistance of the water at higher speeds will overtake the feasible gains in power. I want to get as close to the limit as I can.”

That may be Peaty’s plan, but the practical secret behind his relentless progress lies in small daily improvements: “You can’t just think, ‘I want to win.’ You need to think of the processes, and to go where nobody has gone before you have to try new things.”

To enhance his fitness, Peaty has started doing extra workout drills with a former SAS soldier. His military dreams still inspire him even today, but he’s adapted them again to meet his new goals. “You can’t stop learning and I want to learn from the best in every field. Some athletes say it’s all about the performance on the day. That’s wrong. It’s about making that high level your daily habit.”

Peaty may have made a Royal Marine or fighter pilot, but the swimming pool is now his battleground. “In the pool, it’s war mode,” he says. “You have respect for each other, but none of you are friends in that moment. You get this gladiator mindset – and I love it. I want to build a legacy and join the greats. And I know that if I take care of winning and setting world records, that legacy will take care of itself.”

Instagram: @adam_peaty

Words: Mark Bailey

Photography: Rick Guest