Adam Peaty looking forward to Paris 2024 after mental health break

LONDON – Three-gold Olympic swimming champion Adam Peaty said he took a break from the sport to halt his “endless search” for rewards, but the Briton also hopes he will be in a better mindset at the 2024 Paris Games.

The 28-year-old said in March that he was tired and not enjoying swimming as much as before, and he

pulled out of the British championships

in April to focus on his mental health.

The breaststroke specialist, who also missed the 2022 world championships in Budapest after fracturing a bone in his foot, has previously spoken about periods of depression and problems with alcohol.

“I took a break because I was on this endless search of a gold medal or a world record and I looked into the future and I said, ‘OK, if I do get that, is my life fixed or any better?’ No,” Peaty told the BBC on Tuesday.

“A good friend of mine said a gold medal is the coldest thing you will ever wear. It’s the coldest thing because you think it will fix all of your problems. It will not.

“So take the time now to really think about who you are, what you want out of life and then get the gold medal.

“Hopefully, when I get to the Olympics, I will be in a very good mindset, very grateful and, most importantly, happy.”

The Briton, who won two gold medals and a silver at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and holds the 50m and 100m breaststroke world records, added: “As athletes, our brains are wired a little bit differently, we’re constantly chasing reward and, if we can see that reward, we will work extremely hard for that reward.

“For me, it was something that I was constantly chasing and constantly doing and I was like, ‘I don’t want this in my life, I don’t really want to do this all the time’.”

Besides his Olympic medals, Peaty has also won eight golds in the world championships, 17 golds at the European championships and four golds at the Commonwealth Games.

It remains to be seen how much further he can go after Paris but, according to his interview with the BBC, he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as he struggled with his mental health and injury issues in 2022.

He said that he hears voices in his head which often make him doubt himself and, when asked what do the voices say, he added: “If I was going out to a race sometimes, it would be ‘you don’t deserve this’, even though I’ve done seven, eight, 10 years, a decade of work.

“Or, sometimes, it would be a voice of self-doubt and I think that’s natural because it’s your brain trying to protect itself.” REUTERS