In the end Adam Peaty didn’t seem as happy as he did relieved. He hauled himself up out on to the lane divider, shouted, splashed the water, then fell silent and stared into the middle distance. Overcome with emotion, and exhaustion, he mouthed what seemed to be a silent prayer. “I was probably swearing,” he said later. “More than likely.”
He did a fair bit of that, who hasn’t one time or another in the past few months. “I’m just so fucking relieved,” he told the BBC. “I couldn’t give a shit about my time,” he said to the press. He sounded like a man who had just had a great weight lifted off.
“That race was mine to lose,” he said, something he had never allow himself to say beforehand. “Everyone knew it, I was trying not to think it.”
It was not just the pressure of being the heavy favourite, it was everything he has been through. The past year has been hard on everyone, Peaty said, and he is no exception. He has bought a house, become a father and has been trying to balance his those responsibilities with his sport. All this while coping with the travel restrictions, which meant he was not able to go abroad to train and that when he’s been racing there has been no crowd to cheer him on.
“In Rio, yes, it was about breaking the world record but this Olympics was very different,” he said. “This last year it felt almost like we were under siege.” He was honest enough to admit there had been times when he had broken down under the stress of it all.
His wife, Eiri, had written him a letter, he said, which he carried with him here. He read it the night before the final. “It said: ‘This is what it is all about.’
“I don’t think people back home will understand the amount of investment that went into this swim. You can do what you want all year round, you can do what you want in your own arena, in your own back yard, and it doesn’t mean anything. But it means everything here and you can lose it all in the last moment.
“But for me all that investment has paid off. It’s like going for a job promotion, you try to prove yourself over five years and then it all comes down to showing what you’re worth in 56 seconds.” Or 57.37sec to be exact, the fifth-fastest time in history. He is the only man who has been quicker.
Watching Peaty win was watching a man fulfil his destiny. He believes as much. He says has been given a gift “and I don’t want that gift to be wasted, that’s why my preparation has been so hard, I didn’t want to waste this opportunity”.
He has become the first British swimmer to defend an Olympic title, yet another extraordinary achievement in a list of records, deeds and titles that now takes about as long to read as he does to swim the 100m. Five-time world record breaker, three-time world champion, two-time Olympic champion. He is the greatest breaststroke swimmer in history.
Peaty is also one of the greatest Olympic athletes Britain has had, a man so dominant he has essentially made the event a futile pursuit for everyone else. Second is the best they can get. Just ask them. “He has raised it to a new standard,” said the Netherlands’ Arno Kamminga, who won the silver. “It’s just inspiring to see him swim breaststroke, to see what breaststroke can be.”
Kamminga finished in 58sec flat, faster than anyone has swum the event, except for the man ahead of him, who is, at his best, more than another second quicker.
“Going under 58 seconds is something special, I know that now,” said Kamminga. “But going 57-low is next level and we all still have a long way to go to get there. What he does, 56 seconds, that is just insane.
“When he races he is always on another level and if you see his stroke it is just so well technically executed, everything in it is right, every last little detail, he just doesn’t make mistakes. Still, when I’m next to him on the blocks I’m going to race him no matter what. Because it doesn’t matter what your PB is, it is all about that race.”
It is. The problem for Kamminga and the rest is that Peaty knows it too. “It’s not about times here, it’s about the race, and no one races better than me,” Peaty said. “I just love to race, I’m probably the biggest competitor you know.”
Sign up for our Tokyo 2020 briefing with all the news, views and previews for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
He has not been beaten over 100m in more than seven years, one of the longest winning streaks in the history of swimming. “I’m a firm believer that no one is invincible,” he said, though his career suggests otherwise. “Everyone is beatable and it’s really all down to who wants it more.”
There is more to come. He will swim in two relays, the men’s medley, and the mixed medley. Beyond that, he plans to compete in Paris in 2024.
First, he says, he is going to spend some time with his wife and child. “The amount of time that has been taken away from me with my partner and my boy – I just want to make that time up, these are moments we will never get back.”
No, but he spent them well, on an achievement that will be remembered for ever.