Peaty: Great Britain swimmers looking strong

Peaty returned to the pool on Thursday evening to claim his fourth medal of the European Championships, but it has been the emergence of people such as Freya Anderson which has got people talking in Glasgow.

The 17-year-old picked up bronze in the final race of the event – the 4x100metre medley relay – to take her own personal medal tally to four and together with fellow teenagers such as Holly Hibbott and Imogen Clark, who also won medals on the final night at Tollcross, have shown the future is strong for British swimming.

“They have been fearless,” said Peaty. “And in four years’ time maybe they will be standing here with four gold medals as well.

“They are only 17/18 and it just proves that we are not just a ‘Generation Z’, we have the back-up coming through to Tokyo and beyond.

“Hopefully I can lead a good team into Tokyo with the older ones as well.”

A fourth medal of the championships completed a dominant week for Peaty, who by his own admission dropped below his high standards in the Commonwealth Games earlier in the year.

He vowed to take a different approach to his races in Glasgow and was rewarded as the men’s 4x100m medley relay team – composing Peaty, Nicholas Pyle, Duncan Scott and James Guy – set a new championship mark to complete his perfect European record.

“A triple quad, 12th long-course European gold in four years,” he said. “It’s been very successful for Team GB.

“We are looking strong at the moment.”

Peaty had tried to downplay the event in the build-up, admitting it was not as high in his list of priorities as other major meets but says that mindset quickly changed.

He said: “I came here thinking ‘it’s not Olympics, it’s not World Championships, it doesn’t really matter to me’, but when I’m here, I’m like ‘let’s have it!’”

Great Britain finished the swimming with a total of 24 medals – nine of which were gold – leaving them second only to Russia with 26 in the pool.

As well as the men’s relay team, Clark, Litchfield, Guy and Hibbott picked up two silver and two bronze medals respectively, before the women’s relay team added bronze.

It was all kicked off on Thursday evening by Ben Proud, who claimed a comfortable win in the 50m freestyle final.

However, he was not satisfied after failing to build on the championship record time set in the semi-final.

“Looking at the competition, it was good enough to get my hand on the wall first but for future reference, I can’t be doing that in future championships,” he said.

“I’m very happy with the 21.11 last night, and I guess 21.3 is fast enough to win gold but when I have to go against the rest of the world, it won’t be fast enough.

“It is good practice and something to address in the future.”