Swimming: "The Very Best Breaststroker Who Ever Lived"

It says something about Adam Peaty’s “superhuman standards” that his second gold medal of the World Aquatic Championships felt “like something of an anticlimax”, said Daniel Schofield in The Daily Telegraph.

The British swimmer’s time of 25.99 seconds in the 50m breaststroke last Wednesday may have been the second-fastest in history; just 0.04 seconds behind the world record that he’d set the previous day. But he has raised the bar so high that a new record is expected “whenever he dives in the pool”. Still, Peaty not only won that race but, two days earlier, took gold in the 100m breaststroke with a Championship record of 57.47 seconds. At just 22, Peaty has already won five World Championship golds, more than any other British swimmer in history.