Adam Peaty and coach Jamie Main, director of swimming at Repton School in England, have revealed that the breaststroke ace is growing his cap in the ring for the 50m freestyle ahead of the LA 2028 Olympic Games.

Citing the monumental success of Australian Cameron McEvoy, who two weeks ago took the pace of the 50m freestyle below the 21sec in a textile suit for the first time in history with a 20.88sec blast at the China Open, Main noted that recent tests held in secret with coach Mel Marshall in Australia on a recent training camp and then at Repton and Loughborough show that the breaststroke ace has "amazing" unlocked potential that promises to unleash an unexpected force in the freestyle dash.

Sources tell SOS that tests in the past week, as Peaty prepares to continue his way back to full strength on breaststroke, saw the sprinter trial a max-power freestyle dash in which he broke 21sec short-course. That was then backed up in the long-course pool when he scraped the 21.5 mark in the long-course pool.

Main would not confirm the times but told State of Swimming:

"We thought, why not. Cam does not much more than 1,000m in the pool each week and is now known for doing far more on far less but more top-speed focussed work in the water. His land and strength work is an important part of that picture. Well, of course, Adam's been doing all of that for years on breaststroke, with more volume in the water, but the great thing is he does even less top-speed freestyle in training than Cam, so we thought, why not test the theory."

Peaty spent two months doing no freestyle at all apart from two race-pace sprint tests at the start and end of training every day. Then came the secret race tests.

"We were blown away," said Main.

"Adam is going to be seriously competitive on freestyle by LA2028, so watch out Cam! We have a few things to tweak before the serious work starts on honing Adam's freestyle technique after trials in Britain this month."

Asked why announce the new now, Main said: "There's no day like the first of the month, and this one in particular to pin your colours to the mast!"