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European Championships: Adam Peaty world record time adjusted after equipment error

Adam Peaty's world record time at the European Championships has been altered after race organisers admitted to problems with timing equipment for a number of races.

The British swimmer initially clocked 57.00 in the 100m breaststroke final during Saturday's afternoon session in Glasgow, but that time has now been revised to 57.10.

It will still go down as a world record but means a significantly lowered improvement from Peaty's best time of 57.13 -- also the previous world record -- which he set at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

In a statement the European Swimming League (LEN) said there had been a problem with nine races on Saturday.

"During the afternoon competition session on Saturday, the LEN Technical Swimming Committee became aware of a potential problem in relation to the race timing equipment for the first nine races of that session.

"Upon thorough investigation it became apparent that the starting mechanism had been incorrectly configured prior to the start of the session which resulted in all reported times being 0.10 seconds faster due to a configuration delay of 0.10 seconds."

The other races affected were the women's 800m freestyle final, the women's 100m butterfly, both men's 100m freestyle semi-finals, both women's 100m breaststroke semi-finals and both men's 200m butterfly semi-finals.

The organisation said it had worked with the operators of the timing system to confirm the error before revising the times that had been recorded.

It said no other sessions of competition had been affected and all other times were accurate, including the other world record in the session by Russian swimmer Kliment Kolesnikov in the 50-meter backstroke.

The European Swimming League (LEN) later apologised to Peaty and other affected athletes and a senior official added that he could see no reason why the record would not be ratified by the sport's governing body FINA.

"We have spoken to Adam Peaty and his agent, and British Swimming," Craig Hunter, vice chairman of the technical swimming committee of LEN, told reporters.

"We said sorry, we apologised, as we did to all of the teams.

"This shouldn't have happened. It has happened, and when issues happen we have to apologise.

"We will be submitting the record application for the world record to FINA. It will be signed by the referee, who will follow all the usual protocols. Provided it meets all the viable criteria in the usual way it will be approved, absolutely.

"Of course it is up to FINA to ratify the record, they are the governing body, but the form has been correctly completed, it has an accurate official time from LEN and we cannot foresee a reason why FINA would not ratify it."

British swimming officials took the revision in their stride, with national performance director Chris Spice saying: "We support LEN's vigilance in this matter and appreciate the time they have taken to make sure all times are correct.

"We want this event to be remembered for the amazing achievements of the athletes so it is important that the results are correct. We don't want this to take away from Adam's amazing performance which we all experienced in a fantastic environment."

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