Dancing shoes off, Peaty back to making a splash

The multiple Olympic gold medallist won 50 and 100m breaststroke events at the British Championship.

“I’m Adam Peaty, and I’m best known for winning triple Olympic gold medals.”

Adam Peaty during a dance reality show

It’s an unusual way to introduce oneself in a promotional video barely one month after becoming the first British swimmer to retain an Olympic title. But unusual is the path Adam Peaty took after his two gold medals at the Tokyo Games last year where he whisked in the water. He soon waltzed on the land.

Just over six months later, a couple of them spent dancing on a reality show to whip up a fresh challenge after filling his appetite for the sport at the Olympics, the 27-year-old has returned to the pool. In his first major competitive final in only his second meet after the extended pause, Peaty won the 100m breaststroke at the British Swimming Championships in Sheffield earlier this month. He also added the 50m title in the event which doubled up as the trials for the World Championships in Budapest in June.

The 100m is where Peaty left a historic mark in Tokyo – he also won the 4x100m mixed medley gold and 4x100m medley silver there — as he defended his 2016 Rio Games crown with a timing of 57.37 seconds. Peaty clocked 58.58 seconds at the British Championships, the second fastest time in the event in the world this year so far, behind the man he beat in Tokyo, Dutchman Arno Kamminga. Yet, it’s not even within Peaty’s 30 best 100m efforts and a long way off his personal best of 56.88 seconds, the world record.

“But that’s a real confidence boost for me because this year, it’s more of a comeback than a continuation of what I’m doing,” Peaty said. “It's not continuing over. When you have five months off, you see the likes of Michael Phelps having five months off after the Olympics, it's hard to get back to that stage quickly.”

More so for Peaty, who was on a totally different stage after returning from Tokyo. The British swimmer did not fancy the standard unwinding phase for elite athletes after an Olympic cycle: relax, reflect, reassess, return. Reinvent: that’s what Peaty sought, after dedicating a large part of five years to the monotonous routine of training with the single-minded goal of repeating his Olympic glory.

A month after achieving that in the Games held in July-August last year, Peaty signed up to take part in Strictly Come Dancing, a British television dance reality contest in which celebrities team up with professional dancers to compete against each other. Partnering professional dancer Katya Jones, Peaty spent seven weeks on the show from September to November, training to improve his skills away from the pool and in a sphere that made him “uncomfortable” at times, as he wrote in one of his Instagram posts. In the show promo for BBC, Peaty mentioned waltz as the dance form he was most looking forward to learn.

“I was like, you know what, I’m going to need a challenge,” Peaty said. “And I think Strictly is one of those things. I’m absolutely horrendous at dancing. So I want to do that… There’s a multitude of reasons why I’m doing it. It’s more really just to be challenged, just a break from the normal season, off-season, routine.”

Sportspersons and dancing isn’t the most novel amalgamation. In the American version of the show titled Dancing with the Stars, prominent sporting personalities including tennis legend Martina Navratilova, boxers Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Evander Holyfield, 12-time Olympic medallist swimmer Natalie Coughlin and World Cup-winning footballer Hope Solo have shaken a leg. Cricketers Darren Gough and Mark Ramprakash and gymnast Louis Smith have also dabbled in Strictly Come Dancing.

For Peaty, however, taking the plunge wasn’t just a case of experimenting with an unknown. He also yearned for a break from the water. The postponement of the 2020 Olympics forced Peaty to push his body and mind for an extra year. By the time he arrived in Tokyo, a “very tired”, Peaty “wasn’t enjoying swimming,” as he revealed in another Instagram post. The issue of mental health took centre stage in the midst of the Games, courtesy Simone Biles, and Peaty realised he needed to address it too after his medal-glittered Olympics.

“You're seeing it in all sports now. You’re seeing it with Simone Biles, you’re seeing it with Ben Stokes, mental health matters,” Peaty was quoted as saying by The Telegraph last August. “It is about getting the balance right at that elite level.”

And so Peaty traded his swimming goggles for dancing shoes. He was the sixth celebrity to be voted out of the show in November and towards the turn of the year, was “back to the day job”. Refreshed mentally more than physically, Peaty began his preparation for a hectic season that includes the World Championships and a home Commonwealth Games. “What made me fresh two years ago doesn’t make me fresh anymore,” Peaty has said.

A bit of waltz and rumba seems to have helped the swimmer.