Adam Peaty wants to spark a gold rush for Team GB in Tokyo after winning Britain’s first gold for a second successive Olympics.
The 26-year-old continued his seven-year winning streak in the 100metre breaststroke for the golden outcome first achieved in Rio de Janeiro.
Five years ago, it sparked Britain’s greatest ever Olympics with 27 golds and 67 medals in all.
The medal expectation has diminished in Tokyo but Peaty said: “These Games are about individual performance but also about the greater team effort. Everyone has a part to play whether that be a catalyst for more gold, silver and bronze.
“I hope to give more inspiration to the team. And hopefully this is a catalyst not only for Team GB but people back home to go into another gear.”
Peaty’s family, friends and many others in the UK would have stayed up to watch his final in the early hours of the morning, diving off the blocks a little after 3am back at home.
As the rest of Britain woke up to his latest achievement – his time in winning was the fifth fastest in history but half a second off his own world record – he said he also hoped to inspire a nation rather than simply the 375-strong British team in Japan.
“Sport has an amazing power to inspire people and hopefully that’s motivation for people this morning getting up in Britain,” he said.
“The world is going through a tough time. Covid has taken a lot of fun out of things.”
Peaty’s gold on day three of the Games was the perfect pick-me-up after Bradly Sinden having came agonisingly close to beating him to the accolade of first golden Brit only to be denied in the taekwondo the previous night.
It was also a landmark gold, the 100th for Britain since National Lottery funding was introduced, the biggest catalyst for change for a team and nation once starved of medals.
There was an initially subdued reaction as Peaty left the pool, the sense being one of disappointment at a world record missed. But he was essentially both relieved and exhausted at the magnitude of his achievement.
Prior to the final, his coach Mel Marshall had drummed into him the mantra, “it isn’t about the time, it’s about the race” and his response was quite simple, “no one races better than me”.
He denied in the aftermath he was invincible as the medallists Arno Kamminga, the second quickest man in history for the event, and Nicolo Martinenghi sat either side him.
And yet his repeated performance in terms of his times – groundbreaking ones he likened to Sir Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile – suggest his unbeaten streak shows few signs of coming to an end.
He made it abundantly clear that Paris is a target and Los Angeles could yet be too if he is still enjoying it, and the manner in which he leapt out of the water in celebration suggests that’s not about to happen anytime soon.
When he woke up today, he read a letter from his girlfriend Eiri, who wrote “this is what it’s about” while, perhaps aptly in light of the host nation, he took inspiration from the film The Last Samurai.
He described the contrast between Rio and Tokyo as night and day, now a father to baby George, a role he relished despite admitting he enjoying coming to competitions to catch up on sleep.On the blocks, the race was already won, the rest of the seven men in the final, some of them the quickest of all time for the 100metre breaststroke, left to scrap it out for the mere morsels of a silver.
When Peaty picked up the British team’s first gold five years ago, the medals flowed in quick succession. The expectation is Team GB’s treasure chest will not be quite so laden when they return home in two weeks but it now has that all-important first gold.
He said it was all about being present, and he was just that. He has been the past in his sport, he is the present and those in silver and bronze admitted he is also the future for a few years still.
