Adam Peaty loses but has found something more valuable than Olympic gold
Adam Peaty spoke until he could speak no more.
For more than 10 minutes in a temporary corridor somewhere in Paris’ La Defense Arena, before the sore throat which in all probability cost him a third Olympic 100 metre breaststroke gold eventually got the better of his vocal chords, Britain’s greatest ever swimmer stood, his face wet with tears, trying to find the words to sum up the last hour, the last 14 months, the last decade.
He was happy to do it.
“I don’t mind, I have nowhere to be,” said Peaty when a Team GB press officer politely tried to halt the stream of questions from a group of around 20 journalists, all eager to hear from a man who had missed out on Olympic immortality by the barest of margins.
Two hundredths of a second, to be precise, was the difference between silver and gold, the latter going to Italy’s Nicolo Martinenghi in one of the biggest surprise results of these Games so far.
Peaty, who had been aiming to become just the second male swimmer after Michael Phelps to win three golds in the same event, had to settle for second place.
Yet the tears shed on Sunday night, first in his live interview with BBC TV and then again in subsequent conversations with radio and written press, were not of sadness.
“I have a happy heart and that is all that matters,” said Peaty.
You suspect the pure athlete within, the one who over the last 10 years has redefined his event and who was for so long a winning machine, was hurting.
But Peaty the man? That is a different story now. He’d told us enough times in the build-up how the last 14 months, which saw him recover from the point of almost quitting the sport, had transformed his outlook on life, how he no longer defined himself by results.
