BIRMINGHAM, England -- Adam Peaty suffered a stunning defeat in the men's 100m breaststroke final at the 2022 Commonwealth Games on Sunday as England teammate James Wilby took gold.
Peaty, who missed last month's FINA World Championships with a broken foot, was racing in his first major final since Tokyo 2020, where he won two gold medals and became the first British swimmer to successfully defend an Olympic title.
Peaty is competing in a home Commonwealth Games this week and is a sporting hero in the West Midlands, having been born in Uttoxeter, just a short drive from host city Birmingham.
"Sometimes you just have a bad race," Peaty, 27, said. "I couldn't pinpoint what went wrong. I walked out and thought 'I feel good' like I do most of the time, but it was two seconds slower than the Olympics, so obviously something major has gone wrong in that cycle, whether it's missing another winter block and doing something different.
"It's probably my last Commonwealths, but going into my next two years it's about how do I peak in Paris. There's a lot of stuff going wrong in my training programme... I just didn't feel too good down that last 25m. It is what it is, you can't overthink it right now."
Peaty, who holds the world record in the event, took a mental health break after last year's Olympic Games, not touching the water for a month as he prepared for a new Olympic cycle ahead of Paris 2024.
He had initially planned to return to the pool in time for last month's World Championships before he was ruled out and he faced a race to be fit in time for the Games in Birmingham.
Peaty began the race well and was in the lead after 50m, but he faded in the second half, with England's Wilby claiming gold ahead of Australia's Zac Stubblety-Cook and Sam Williamson in silver and bronze, respectively. Peaty finished in fourth place, his time of 59.86 almost three seconds short of his world record time set in 2019.
"I don't really care about stats or how long you're undefeated," Peaty said. "Every time I get on to these blocks I'm willing to fight and race anyone in the world. I kind of lost that spark, maybe it's my foot. But we'll find out in the next months, two years."