Adam Peaty became the first British swimmer to win three gold medals at a single world championships with victory in the 50m breaststroke before making up a quarter of the British 4x100m mixed medley relay squad who set a world record en route to the title in Russia.
Peaty had matched the 40-year-old feat of David Wilkie when he edged out the reigning champion Cameron van der Burgh for the second time in 48 hours in the 50m breaststroke. That made him not only the first British man since Wilkie in 1975 to win two titles at a single worlds but also the first man in world championship history to clinch the 50m and 100m breaststroke double.
The 20-year-old then returned to swim the breaststroke leg as the British mixed relay squad set a world record of 3min 41.71sec. It saw Britain top the table with seven medals, just one short of their best haul of eight in the pool in 1975 in Cali, Colombia, and in Barcelona in 2003 with four days to go. Four gold medals, though, represents their best return.
It means Peaty – who is coached by the former world medallist Mel Marshall at City of Derby – has three gold medals and two world records with the 200m breaststroke and the men’s 4x100m medley relay to come. On Wednesday he again had to overhaul Van der Burgh who held a clear lead in the one-length race only for Peaty to beat the South African to the touch by 0.15sec in 26.51. It was history repeating itself for Van der Burgh who was beaten to the 100m crown by his young rival on the final stroke on Monday.
A beaming Peaty said: “It’s my first world championships and I never thought I would walk away with three gold medals like that. Every centimetre, every inch has been one of the hardest. My race with Cameron the other day was one of the hardest I’ve ever done and I didn’t get taken away by the occasion and that last 50 was where it all counted.
“All that training was for the 50 tonight and all that training was for the 100 tonight as well. I knew he was ahead but that is the main strength of my swimming and once I got swimming I was: ‘Right, I’m catching him, I’m catching him, I’m ahead.’ So I was pretty confident for my swim.”
Nerves and anxiety during the race – especially with Van der Burgh clearly ahead – would have been understandable and even more so given it is Peaty’s world championship debut. Those are things that have already been addressed though.
“A lot of secrets in training that me and Mel have – I am not willing to share that with the world at the moment. I just feel calm coming from Commonwealths, coming from Europeans, this team we’ve got now is so calm. As soon as I get tense on that 50 I go slow and I know that so I just like to chill out, have a few laughs and do my own thing. I mean it’s only a length of a pool, it’s not exactly hard.
“I don’t want to sound cocky – there are people with real problems out there so I just do what I’m grateful for.”
Peaty then joined Chris Walker-Hebborn, Siobhan-Marie O’Connor and Fran Halsall in the mixed medley relay which is making its first appearance at a global long-course event. The British quartet who won the European title in Berlin last year thought they had set a world mark in the fledgling event. However, an administrative error by the governing body Fina meant the record was not ratified, as was the case with Peaty’s 50m breaststroke mark from Germany although he took the matter out of everyone’s hands on Wednesday.
Walker-Hebborn and Peaty swam the first two legs, handing over to O’Connor for the butterfly and she in turn ensured Halsall had a healthy lead for the final freestyle leg. It is up to the teams to decide the order of who goes where in the quartet, meaning women can be pitted against men, as was the case with Halsall who found herself up against the triple world medallist Vladimir Morozov anchoring the Russians with a point to prove after being disqualified from the individual 100m freestyle semi-finals earlier.
However, Halsall brought the British home and grinned: “It was good fun. I was saying to my coach beforehand: ‘It’s alright James, I’ve been chased by uglier, more scary men before so that was fine!
“World record, gold medal, world champions – it’s fantastic, a nice feeling.”