c’mon in the water’s lovely
I don’t have many claims to sporting fame but I did once share a swimming lane with the recently departed, and luxuriously mustachioed, David Wilkie MBE, and thought I held my own for a good fifteen metres of the pool. Give or take ten. So, I was delighted to see that in honour of his Olympic achievements his son, Adam Wilkie, is attempting to match his father’s world record-breaking 200m breaststroke swim, fifty years after it made history. Sadly, by his own admission, Adam was not born with his dad’s swimming-genes but God loves a trier and in recognition of the 2.15.11 time he’s seeking to raise #215,110 for the next generation of athletes via the charity SportsAid.
The reason for mentioning this is that I noticed t’other day Adam Peaty (now, following his marriage to Gordon Ramsey’s daughter, Adam Ramsay-Peaty), is back in the drink, so to speak and I don’t think we really appreciate how good he is at breaststroke. He is The Greatest of all Time, the Usain Bolt of the deep end, the Lionel Messi of the chlorinated water, the Sachin Tendulker of cold changing rooms. An eight-time world champion, a multiple world record holder and probably our greatest athlete ever. And as of this month, 31 year-old Ramsey-Peaty is game-on to compete in his fourth Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
To most of us we probably have an idea of him as a peacocking, slightly surly figure who appears simultaneously 100% committed whilst on the verge of quitting and telling us what to do with our goggles and gold trinkets. Menaced by addictions and depression he seems both at the top of his sport and languishing in the doldrums. Consequently, and best of all, he’s a normal kinda bloke who just happens to have an abnormal talent for performing like a demented frog.
Famously he was so afraid of water as a child his family would have to apologise to the neighbours for all the shouting and screaming at bath time. No, really. Like many kids these days, he went to his first swimming lesson at school and was so-so about it until he noticed pals that he’d swum with were doing half-decent things in London 2012 and getting all the attention. This was the lightbulb moment that encouraged him to quit the booze, ditch the junk food and hit the pool. The rest is history.
But he remains largely unknown and most people would struggle to pick him out of a police line-up. Previously, in another age the nation, to a man, would have known his face, his excessive tattoos and his life story. In the 70s and 80s we recognised our athletes centrally and universally. Ramsey-Peaty would have been a David Hemery, a Mary Peters, a Daley Thompson, a Lester Piggott, a Jonah Barrington and yes, a David Wilkie. Anyway, I for one can’t wait to see his bobbing head parting the waters again in Los Angeles in 2028. Good luck to both Adams.
