Rio de Janeiro: Britain’s Adam Peaty launched his 2016 Rio Olympics campaign with a world record 57.55sec in the heats of the 100m breaststroke on Saturday.
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He also won three gold medals at the 2015 World Championships: 50m breaststroke (not an Olympic event), 100m breaststroke (in world record time) and the mixed 4x100m medley relay.
Adam will compete next in the semi-finals and if he wins the gold medal in the finals, he will become the first British swimmer to bring home gold since 1988. “My first Olympic Games and I’m just excited to race”.
Mrs Peaty said: “It is quite exciting really, I don’t really believe how fast it has come up”. “We’re not going to get too complacent now, we’re going to keep pushing the boundaries and see what we get”.
That was 0.37 seconds faster than the record he set previous year, as he finished more than a second clear of everyone else in Saturday’s six heats.
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Defending Olympic champion Cameron van der Burgh of South Africa was seventh, 1.8 seconds adrift of Peaty, and will have his work cut out in the semis and in Sunday’s final.
