Swimming · 2016 · Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Peaty Redefines the Breaststroke
A 21-year-old from Uttoxeter breaks his own 100m breaststroke world record and gives Britain its first Olympic swimming gold in nearly three decades.
57.13s (world record)
Time
1.56 seconds
Margin of victory
28 years
British men's swimming gold gap
Adam Peaty came to the 2016 Rio Olympics as reigning world champion and world record holder in the 100m breaststroke, and had already rewritten the record in the heats. In the final he went out fast and never let up, touching in 57.13 seconds to break his own world record again and finishing over a second clear of the silver medallist, which in a sprint final is an enormous margin.
It was Britain's first Olympic swimming gold since Adrian Moorhouse in 1988, ending a 28-year wait for a British male swimmer. Peaty then held the world record and the Olympic title across multiple Games, a run of dominance no breaststroke swimmer had previously sustained.
His stroke, unusually powerful and run at a higher tempo than the event was used to, came off the back of an extensive land-based strength programme, and it changed how the event is trained and swum at elite level. The breaststrokers who followed him were working from his template.
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