It was like watching Lionel Messi unable to control a ball with his left foot on a soccer field. Adam Ramsay-Peaty threw himself into the pool with the hydrodynamics of a sack of stones yesterday at the European Championships in Paris. He emerged in last place in his 50-meter breaststroke heat. Lagging behind from the start, he didn’t have time to recover and touched the wall in 27.34s. Two seconds slower than his 2017 world record (25.95s), which still stands unbeaten. Even slower than the 166 times he has recorded throughout his top-level competitive career, six of which remain the best times in the history of the 50 breaststroke.
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“This is so bad that I’m confused,” he said upon leaving the pool, flushed from the effort, his gaze lost after realizing that the 20th time in the heats wouldn’t even get him into the semifinals. “I really don’t know where to start the analysis.”
No one could come close to Adam Peaty for a decade. The Englishman, born in Uttoxeter in 1994, current record holder of the 100 and 50 breaststroke, triple Olympic champion, became the emblem of the invincible athlete. A brand in the United Kingdom with all that implies in terms of income and popularity. His untouchable course seemed guaranteed when James Wilby beat him at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. What seemed like an extraordinary event turned into a storm cloud from which he never recovered.
“I entered a self-destructive spiral,” he later told The Guardian. First, he doubled the intensity of his training. He pushed himself to return to the routine of maximum effort and absolute dedication that led him to break 57 seconds in the 100. What he called “scorched earth.” He sank. Anxiety, exhaustion, uncontrolled alcohol consumption, depression, were part of the cycle of his new life. His collapse constituted, as often happens with major figures in English popular culture, a live narrative, a confession before the crowd, a yellow-toned media show. The estrangement from his parents culminated a story of misunderstandings that ended with his return to competition in 2023. His goal was to win the third consecutive Olympic championship in an individual event, the 100 breaststroke, which would have equaled what Michael Phelps did for the first time in history, triple Olympic gold in the 200 butterfly. Peaty took silver — the gold went to Nicolò Martinenghi — by two hundredths at the 2024 Games.
He considered retirement. He married Holly Ramsay, the daughter of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. He changed his last name and changed coaches. He said he wanted to lead a “more human” life. But when the International Olympic Committee decided to include the 50 breaststroke in the 2028 Games program, he resolved to get back to work. His appearance at the European Championships in Paris was as disastrous as it was revealing.
“I don’t know what happened to me at the start,” he confessed. “I know it wasn’t my reaction time. Probably it all comes down to the way I entered the water. We started [with Lisa Bates, his new coach] deconstructing the water entry in June. And obviously many things have gone wrong since then. I’ve been swimming worse since then and I surely have to change many things that haven’t worked. The water entry and the push to emerge.”
