Adam Peaty Books Budapest
Adam Peaty, captain of London Roar and breaststroke pace pioneer, will bypass Dallas this weekend and make his International Swimming League debut in Budapest next week and then race his home den at the British capital’s 2012 Olympic Aquatics Centre in late November.
London Roar will begin its ISL life in Dallas this week when the last four of the eight League teams compete for the first time. LA Current, NY Breakers, Iron, and London Roar will fight for supremacy in the second group of teams on a tour that concludes in Las Vegas with a “Final Match” of the two best Europe-based squads vs the two best U.S.-based teams on December 21-22 at the 12,000-seat Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
Peaty, the Olympic 100m breaststroke champion whose coach Mel Marshall was named as one of eight mentors to have been selected for Britain team duty at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games next year, has long maintained that all plans have to fit his preparation for defending the big crown in Japan next summer.
The same applies to others in the League, Katie Ledecky having missed the second round of racing with DC Trident after a stellar start and Caeleb Dressel the first round for his team, Cali Condors, before making a monumental ISL debut last weekend in Naples.
London Roar can afford to have Peaty sit Dallas out: Kiril Prigoda, of Russia, and Matt Wilson, of Australia, are also breaststroke-ace members of Roar. Wilson set the world record over 200m at World Championships in semi-finals in Gwangju last July before taking silver in the final behind the new world record holder, Anton Chupkov, of Russia.
Chupkov knows the threat of Prigoda well. There’s heritage to take account of too: Prigoda’s father, Gennadiy Prigoda, was a four-times Olympic medalist in swimming, and his mother, Yelena Volkova, was world champion in 200m breaststroke.
Kristof Milak – Photo Courtesy: Patrick B. Kraemer
Meanwhile, the Dallas round of the League will include:
- Double Olympic backstroke champion and LA Current star Ryan Murphy, the American who claimed a third gold at Rio 2016 in the medley relay that marked the last race in the career of Michael Phelps (golden last race, what else…)
- Triple Olympic champion Katinka Hosszu, captain of Budapest-based Iron
- Olympic 50m free champion Pernille Blume, for the NY Breakers and the first Danish swimmer ever to claim Olympic dash gold.
- Cate and Bronte Campbell, the Australian sprint sorority ready to Roar for global London, alongside American sisters Ali, Gabby, and Catie Deloof for the New York Breakers.
- Hungarian Kristof Milak, for Team Iron, the man who took down Michael Phelps’ 10-year-old 200m butterfly world record for the global crown in July.
- Russian Vladimir Morozov, Iron, the king of a failing (through no faulty of his) World Cup this season
- Double medley World champion of 2017, Chase Kalisz, of home team LA Current.
