Blueseventy Swim of the Week: Peaty’s rise continues with barrier-smashing 57.9

Disclaimer: BlueSeventy Featured Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The BlueSeventy Swim is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks some as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.

Perhaps the breakout swimmer of 2014 was Great Britain’s Adam Peaty, who won golds at the Commonwealth Games and the European Championships while breaking the World Record in the 50 breaststroke.

But in his first major meet of 2015, Peaty proved that last year was far from a flash in the pan.

Swimming at the British Gas Swimming Championships, Peaty finally broke the 100 breaststroke World Record, taking the mark to new heights with the world’s first sub-58-second swim.

Peaty rattled the mark a few times last year, but his 57.92 in mid-April was still a shockingly great swim, especially considering Peaty has every reason to be saving his best stuff for the World Championships in July.

Look at how far Peaty is ahead of the rest of the world at the moment. In a race where only two men broke 59 last year, Peaty is now the overwhelming World Championships favorite, leading the world ranks by well over one full second.

As Britain’s swimming prowess continues to rise rapidly, it’s Peaty who is doing most of the work. His breaststroke dominance almost singlehandedly makes Great Britain gold medal contenders in the 4×100 medley relay, despite the team not having big-name swimmers on the fly or free legs.

Peaty could conceivably outsplit the other contending relays by a full second on the breaststroke leg just based on his world record swim from last week. And if Peaty has something else up his sleeve for Kazan? Well then this formerly-little-known breaststroker could turn out to be the headliner of a World Championships loaded with star power.

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