If Adam Peaty was looking for a sign, there it was, screaming back at him. Sliding into the pew at the Nottingham church where he now returns every Sunday, that first time a little lost and looking for answers, the sermon that day was all about the Olympic Games.
“No one knew I was coming,” he recalls of what has proved a seminal moment. “I was just at the back and I was like, ‘if this isn’t meant for me, then what is?’ I don’t think society has the answers I’m seeking, especially as a young man, and it’s nothing to do with being an athlete.”
For almost the entirety of his career, he had the answers when it came to being the quickest breaststroke swimmer of all time: of how to win on the big days; the Olympic golds; the world titles; and yet there was still a void in his life.
He has talked of the battle he has faced and come out the other side of as “three years of hell”, a time in which he sunk into depression and became reliant on alcohol. Steadily, he has begun to find himself, although he readily admits: “It’s still very hard and it’s still changing slowly.”
The origin of his turnaround began in Melbourne, where he was introduced to Pastor Ashley Null, a currently Berlin-based clergyman who works with a number of elite swimmers. When back in Europe, the pair met up in Nottingham. Peaty then witnessed his poignant first sermon and, as he puts it, “I’ve been there ever since”.
At the Paris Olympics, his faith will be abundantly clear, as people tune in to watch his attempt to seal a hat-trick of 100metre breaststroke titles. On his torso is a large cross with the words ‘Into the Light’ inked beneath it.
There are others he credits with his turnaround beyond the religious overhaul. There is his coach, Mel Marshall, who effectively threw him back in the water, warning that the clock was ticking to Paris.
And then there is his girlfriend, Holly Ramsay, daughter of the celebrity chef Gordon, who has himself been a big support behind the scenes.
“The biggest thing Mel did was get me back in the water six or eight weeks after I stopped, just to literally paddle,” he recalls. “She said, ‘If you want to do this at the Olympics next year, you’ve got to just start feeling the water now’.”
It was baby steps, or strokes, at first, finding his way back physically and mentally before ramping up the training at home and in Thailand before racing in Doha and finally London, where he returned to the times of old at April’s Olympic trials. “There’s something about Mel,” he says. “She’s extremely charismatic and extremely tough.
“You never want to lose that tough side, because you’ve got to make it in this sport, especially for a third Olympics. You’ve got to be asking questions, like ‘how can we get faster?’ but ignore all the other stuff, because that’s irrelevant. I don’t care what other people are doing.”
That is not entirely true. One of his major rivals for gold in Paris, Qin Haiyang, was among 23 Chinese swimmers caught up in a contamination case for the substance TMZ, for which they were cleared of any wrongdoing.
Peaty is not here to talk of the rights and wrongs of that, but is frustrated with the World Anti-Doping Agency’s handling of the case.
“As an athlete, we all want to be treated fairly and with transparency”; the hope being that any doping “results are not hidden and put under secrecy”. He, like many of his peers he says, “are very disappointed in WADA”.
And that brings the issue of the hat-trick of Olympic titles to add to golds in his individual event in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.
“It gives me goosebumps any time I think of it,” he says. “But I can’t get carried away with too much thought. Not many people have done that, be dominant in the same event at three Olympics in a row. I’ve got to make sure I keep my emotions in check.”
That said, he has talked in the past of “swimming angry”, that particular emotion getting the best out of him at key moments in his career. He expects that anger to bubble up come Paris, too. But he does feel a different athlete and person to the one who triumphed at the Covid Games in Tokyo.
“There, I really relied on my ego to get the job done,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’m the best, so I should perform the best’. Now my belief system is a multitude of things. I’m almost a new person through various ways.”
Despite the metamorphosis, he hopes the result is the same.
I used to rely on my ego to get the job done... now I’m almost a new person
As for what lies beyond Paris, at this stage he has no idea, so blinkered has his vision been towards his main event. He says the next Games, in Los Angeles, by which time he will be 33, will be a target if he is still fast enough and still has the motivation.
And occasionally his mind wanders to the bad times possibly returning. This time around, he feels he has the support network to not spiral out of control in the same way.
“I’ve definitely got the structure, but I don’t know what’s ahead of me,” he says. “Some of the most evil stuff could still be ahead of me, some of the stuff that breaks people.
“It would be very naive of me to say I’ve a structure in place and it’s going to fix everything. We know the world is a very unpredictable place. All we can do is prepare and, hopefully, smile in the face of adversity.”
In the water, Peaty was always about predictability, with the quick times and the gold medals. In Paris, he aims to repeat that.
