Depression, alcohol… Adam’s comeback continues to be parable for our occasions

No matter that he touched the board two one-hundredths of a second — about the width of an unclipped fingernail — behind the dark-horse Italian who snatched gold.

Drinking in the electric atmosphere at the Olympic swimming arena as he prepared to mount his starting platform last evening, Adam Peaty might have reflected that he was already the real winner.

As Clare Balding remarked after he was consigned to a silver medal by the narrowest of margins, many will think it was his ‘greatest triumph of all to be here, competing’. All those who have followed the roller-coaster fortunes of this remarkable Olympian will know what she meant.

For after suffering a ‘breakdown’, in 2023, Peaty felt compelled to take a break from swimming and focus on a more pressing race: against his own demons. His chances even of making it to Paris then seemed zero.

Sucking in the air as he strolled into La Defense Area last evening, he gazed around him.

Somewhere up in the packed grandstand, swaddled by his family, was his cherished son, George, who was only 11 months old when he last won gold. He has always wanted his boy to watch him race in the Olympics.

His family were there, of course, too, and his girlfriend, Holly Ramsay, daughter of TV chef Gordon. 

The place was carpeted with Union Flags; football-style chants of ‘Peaty’ echoed around the neon-lit pool. There was no sign of the depression that consumed him last night. We saw a man reborn.

It had been caused, he says, by a tsunami of personal problems which he tried to blot out with alcohol, among them the guilt of spending insufficient time with son George, four, after splitting up with his mother, Eiri Munro.

The cause of their parting has never been explained. Revealing the decision in a statement, in 2022, he simply said they were going separate ways after three ‘wonderful years together’, apologizing to Eiri (whom he had met on the dating app Tinder) and George for ‘letting them down’.

The announcement came less than a year after Peaty had appeared on Strictly, where he was criticised for being overly affectionate towards his mentor, Katya Jones (making to kiss her on the lips after a steamy tango, before pulling away).

While filming the dance series he also met Holly, 24. It is unclear when their relationship began, but it became public when they holidayed in Greece last summer.

Her first initial is now tattooed on Peaty’s neck. He is also ‘inspired’ by her father, who staged a TV interview with him before he left for Paris. It ended with a typical Gordon Ramsay rallying cry: “Don’t f*** this up!” Thanks — no pressure,’ Peaty responded with an uneasy grin. 

It isn’t clear how the romantic turbulence fed into his ‘breakdown’, but it surely can’t have helped. Depression sapped the irrepressible drive that had always defined him. Peaty describes his torment as ‘like having a devil on my shoulder’.

Winning had been all that mattered to him since his first boyhood gala. But now he ‘hated the thing that I’d loved’ and felt ‘trapped in spiral of self-destruction’. 

The story behind his incredible comeback is like a parable. Though he sought psychological help, the man he credits most for ending his despair is Olympic chaplain Dr Ashley Null, who told Britain’s most decorated swimmer: ‘An Olympic gold medal is the coldest thing you will ever wear.’

Peaty takes it to mean that, while the coveted pendant is the ultimate symbol of sporting success, it can’t solve life’s problems and can only be won by sacrificing truly important things such as personal relationships. 

Dr Null also encouraged Peaty to find peace by attending church. By serendipity, he says, the first service he went to was held along the route of the Olympic flame for London 2012, and the sermon happened to be about athletes who took part in the Games.

He left feeling calmer than he had for weeks, and is now a devout Christian. Peaty’s recovery began with a tentative return to competition last October and quickly gathered pace, so that by the end of last year he was talking for a tilt at a third gold.

He also thanks Mel Miller, who has coached him since he first joined a local swimming club. She helped him to rediscover the natural joys of a dip by returning to the pool at Repton School, in Derby, where his training began.

Peaty depicts himself as a working-class lad who succeeded against the odds in a largely middle-class sport. One of four siblings, he was born in December 1994. His father, Mark, was a supermarket caretaker and his mother, Caroline, managed a nursery. Home was a modest semi in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire.

Amusingly, as an infant he was aquaphobic and even cried when his mother put him in the bathtub. When she enrolled him for swimming lessons, aged four, his cries filled the leisure centre.

He overcame these early fears, however, and at 14 he had won so many local races that he was taken under the wing of former Olympic swimmer Marshall.

His innate talent was not immediately obvious. She remembers a lanky boy with a crawl so ugly and inefficient that she put him with the girls in the slow lane. It was only when she ‘bullied’ him to switch to breaststroke that his natural gift became evident.

His unusually large hands worked like shovels, grabbing great fistfuls of water, and dragging them out of his way.

His mobility was also improved by his double-jointed knees and ankles, and flipper-like size 12 feet. He was so strong that his torso was thrust vertically of out the water like a submarine’s tower as he surged along.

But Peaty was 17 before he began to take swimming seriously. It was the summer of 2012, and as Peaty left home for a drinking session with his mates he glanced at the Team GB swimming line-up for the London Olympics.

When he saw the name of Craig Benson, a contemporary on the junior circuit whom he felt he could beat, he vowed to get picked for the next Games, in Rio.

His incredible feats there and in Tokyo four years later have placed him among the sport’s all-time greats.

They have also brought him a glamorous lifestyle, with frequent TV appearances and lucrative deals with car makers CUPRA, Bridgestone tyres, Castore sportswear, and, inevitably, Speedo.

At first blush, he appears to relish his image as a hunky megastar.

He dresses stylishly, makes brash declarations (he has likened himself to a ‘Roman warrior’ and says he works himself into a fury before races) and sports a mosaic of tattoos – one depicts Alexander the Great, another, on his shaven chest, is a simple H for Holly.

Yet he says he is really a split personality: the ‘Staffordshire Bull Terrier of Breaststroke’ who relishes submerging the opposition, and the more reflective private Peaty. Last night the terrier was off the leash, and in less time than it would take the rest of us to slip into our trunks he had powered if not quite to a gold medal, then certainly into Olympic immortality.