"It’s so bad, I’m confused" - Greatest Sprint Breaststroke Ace Crashes Out In Dash Heats
"Swimming feels okay, it's just not enough ... obviously one of my slowest in-season times. It's very frustrating, very frustrating. I just want it to be over because you want to get back to work, but at the same time you want to enjoy it as much as you can." - Adam Ramsay-Peaty
Adam Ramsay-Peaty was in a state of shock, dazed, a man unable to fathom the depth to which his form has sunk: the world record holder and the greatest breaststroke sprinter in history is not even a reserve for the semi-finals of the 50m event that drew him back from the brink of retirement when it was added to the Olympic program last year.
His global high bar at 25.95 back in 2017, Ramsay-Peaty, 31, stared up at the scoreboard is disbelief this morning in Paris at the European Championships: eighth and last in his heat. Not even a reserve: 20th place in 27.34.
Craig Lord
At the top of the pile going into semis was Italian Simone Cerasuolo, 0.25sec shy of Peaty's World record from 2017, on 26.20, a national record that is equal second best ever with the Asian record of China's Qin Haiyang set in 2023. Mind that 0.25sec gap: it demonstrates just how amazing the British ace's best was and remains, in an event where whole podiums are often split by less than 0.1.
Ramsay-Peaty, who owns the six fastest 50m swims in history, also has the best 118 efforts ever by a British swimmer, on a ranking list that shows he has swum swifter than he did this morning no fewer than 166 times, including in competitions that amount to 'local gala' .
Ocean's apart from the king of his jungle he was, the biggest beast of breaststroke we've ever known, Ramsay-Peaty looked like a novice as he left the blocks. His trajectory, the angle of his entry into the Piscine Olympique, was a damp quit of a start that left him more than a metre behind the leaders in his line-up.
After he surfaced and broke into stroke, the triple Olympic and World champ[ion with 16 European titles to his name, including a record three in the 50m event, could see that the damage was done. He then gave us a fleeting 30 metres of the great champion he's been: his pure swimming was the fastest in the pool still as he chased down Nicolò Martinenghi.
The Italian pipped him for Olympic 100m gold by an agonising 0.02sec here in Paris two years ago, prompting the British legend to consider retirement. He's hoped to become only the second man to claim three straight Olympic titles in the same swimming event, after American GOAT Michael Phelps. It was not to be.
However, when the International Olympic Committee confirmed last year that it would add six new stroke 50m events to the Olympic program for LA2028, Ramsay-Peaty said: "I'm In!"
This morning, he looked all but down and out.
A look of pure bewilderment on his face, he told The Times and SOS immediately after the slowest 50m championship race of his international al career for Britain back to 2014:
"These performances are not good enough at all. Even now, I'm like It's so bad that I'm confused. I don't really know where to start on a debrief. It's just a heat, you know. It's so bad ... very frustrating, but I'm hoping we can figure it out."
The dive? What happened?
"I don't really know at this point. I know it wasn't my reaction time. It's probably how I entered the water. We [he and his new coach Lisa Bates, in London] started to deconstruct it just weeks before Rome [a warm-up event in June]. And obviously a lot of things have gone wrong since. It's got worse since then. I think I've just got to really change up what I'm doing, to be honest, in a sense of speaking to Lisa and looking at where we're losing a lot of time with - because it is the dive and the pull-downs that are being this.
"So, the swimming feels okay, it's just not enough. ... yes, you're right, swimming faster than anyone in the race ... but it didn't translate. And then that's obviously one of my slowest in-season times. It's very frustrating, very frustrating. But this week is, and commies were - just one of those lessons, right? I just want it to be over because you want to get back to work, but at the same time you want to enjoy it as much as you can."
Did he think it was time to have a period in which he had to make some hard decisions about what next, and what needed to happen if his LA2028 mission was going to be at all meaningful?
"Yeah, I think you've got to look at it properly - and have a good year 'tacking'," he said, referring to working beyond the glare of competition lights in the background on "all the boring stuff that's critical, essential, if I'm going to show what I know I'm capable of."
