“Now I’m a dad, I think, ‘Do I really want to be this person?'” said Peaty, whose one-year-old son George, with his partner Eiri, will be there next week to watch him in Birmingham. “But at the same time I think: ‘Yes, because that makes me the best in the world at my job’. Sometimes I hate being that person. It is very energy consuming and also a very narrow selfish way of thinking.”
But, he adds, “I’ve tried to do that… [other] route, but I can’t. It means I’m no longer the best in the world. I’m not going to give that away. That’s how I’m put together. I do the things that make me uncomfortable. I still believe I can go fast, really fast, if not faster than I’ve ever been.”
Perhaps even more important to understanding Peaty’s relentless thirst to win is his immediate family background. He is the youngest of four siblings (he has two older brothers and a sister) and cites that family order as an explanation for his rare hunger. “You have to prove your worth, prove that you can get better,” he says. He shared a bedroom with two of his brothers and then another person who lived with us at the same time. There were four of us in one room. It was good because it was very social, but also annoying.”
When I suggest it must have been a lively household, he laughs. “F–ing hell. My mom is worn out. There’s a tremendous amount of energy – maybe it was anger. I could channel that energy. They said people with ADHD have a drive. It’s like a hyperfocus. I don’t know where it comes from, but I can’t sit still. I like to be the best. I like to dominate.”
Peaty emphasizes that he hasn’t been diagnosed with ADHD, but knows other people who have, and thinks it’s “very likely” that he has the condition. “It’s very interesting how sport has helped me channel that,” he says. “I always knew there was something different about me in the last 15 meters in a race. Every time I can dig deeper than anyone else because I have more to prove. If I hadn’t played sports, I probably would have been lost for quite some time until I found what I liked and my niche.”
His motivation once he discovered swimming was clearly off the scale. “My mum woke up at 4am to have me train half an hour away in Derby and then back for school,” he says. “Then I took the bus back from school to Uttoxeter, which was 25 minutes left – plenty of time to get something to eat or sleep – be home for 20 minutes, get me a meal and then get back to training for another three or four hours including travel I would go from 4 am to 10:30 pm.
“I need that daily release,” he continues. “If I go without any physical exertion one day, unless it’s a Sunday when I’m battered, my head starts to go wild. It’s just such a great channel for me to focus, defocus and my fears, my problems, but also strategy and how I think I’m going to get away. Everything comes with staying fit.”
You can feel the pent-up energy even when you’re talking to Peaty. So it must have been difficult for him to take what he calls ‘a risk’ after the Olympics with… a mental health inspired long break from the monotonous daily discipline of swimming, covering approximately 40 miles (or more than 2,500 lengths of a typical 25-meter pool) in an intense week.
“I needed a break,” he admits. “Swimming really is like no other sport because you train for so long without any satisfaction or confirmation of what your work has been. I was so exhausted from hearing the word ‘Covid’. I lost my temper.” It was, he adds, a chance to “think, drink beer and wine… be normal. You just want to avoid burnout as much as possible.”