British Olympic champion and World Record holder Adam Peaty achieved his prior career goal of ‘Project 56’ when he posted the other-worldly time of 56.88 in the men’s 100m breaststroke at the 2019 FINA World Championships.
With another Olympic gold under his belt from Tokyo, 27-year-old Peaty and longtime coach Mel Marshall are now looking ahead to what they term ‘Project Immortal.’
Project Immortal signifies the goal of setting a record that will stand the test of all time.
Peaty says, “Doing a time that can never be beaten… the next three years is how we achieve Project Immortal.
“More than ever we have to kind of attack. I know where I need to be to get to Project Immortal.” (Sky Sports)
Peaty’s gold medal from this summer’s Olympic Games came with a time of 57.37, outside of his aforementioned WR mark, which left the new father slightly disappointed.
“Going into 2021 was tough,” he says, “because my mindset was geared up for last year.
“There was a lot more pressure and a lot more relief when it paid off, but it cost me a lot to get there in terms of my motivation and my commitment.
“I questioned why I was doing it and I never question it – this is what I love. But when you do it without gratification, without winning gold medals, that’s when you start to question ‘why’. That was the toughest thing – beating myself.”
Now with some time off, including competing on the British celebrity dance show ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, the man is already looking ahead to what it will take to achieve Project Immortal.
“Obviously Paris is on the cards and hopefully if I get what I want there, then it’s LA 2028,” he says.
“If I can do what I [want to] do there then I don’t know. I’m already living my boyhood dream so that would be my ‘man’ dream.” (Sky Sports)
Chill dude. It’s just the slow stroke.
The number of angry Americans in these comments is very funny. Reminds me of the comments during the Olympics towards European and Australian athletes. US commenters would make bold predictions and disparage athletes from other countries, but when it was turned round on them they would get very upset.
So what if Peaty is arogant, he’s so unbelievably dominant he has the right to be.
Absolutely incredible. Nows the time to do it. I just turned 60 and what we considered fast is nothing now. I do think the underwater camera is going to make the event even more fair. I saw so many in the last Olympics who had that extra stroke!
Extra stroke is fine, not dolphin kick
There’s a fine line between confidence and delusion, and I think AP just crossed it!
He shall be smite for his bodacious self-glorifying stance. Looking forward to seeing him humbled.
My guess is going sub 54 and no one would touch that for generations now do I think he’s going to go that fast? Probably not but never say never he himself said 53 would be easy work even if he was joking but that would be my guess for what an immortal time would be and that would start with breaking the world record next year and having to go a PB as much as possible for as long as possible basically. Also I got 53 from that post talking about the ‘theoretical human limit’ for fastest possible times.
I feel like this is a self promoting brand thing at this point. The field is starting to creep up on him now.
He’s still half a second clear on a bad day.
It’s a damn long way.
Adam Peaty hasn’t done anything genuine in 3 or 4 years. Since his whole “SCM is dead to me” but a $50k ambassador payday turned that into “the ISL is the greatest thing to ever happen to swimming,” I take everything he says with a grain of salt at this point.
It’s all branding and money. Good for him, swimming needs more of that.
He literally went 56.8 in the summer of 2019. Slow your roll, bucko.
Not sure where the downvotes are coming from, 56.8 counts as “genuine” in my book.
Oh god, this reminded me of his book title: “The Gladiator Mindset.”
Dude, you swim breaststroke. Come on!
(You are v right that it is all just branding and I have such a revulsion to it.)
He’s just a young guy naming a special project. He can be cocky. He can trash talk. In the end two things will probabaly happen……
A. Allow more dolphin kicks in breaststroke (ahem Kitajima).
Or.
B. Kamminga will have decided he’s had enough of being number two.
It’s all sports.
While I don’t agree with A if they’re gonna do it they should do it now to allow Peaty the opportunity to incorporate them into his WR anything else is just unfair.
I will simply have to intervene