Swimming: Adam Peaty fails to qualify from 200m breaststroke heats at World

The 20-year-old from Uttoxeter backed up his 100m title success on Monday by holding off the challenge of Olympic champion Cameron van der Burgh yesterday to take the 50m gold.

In Berlin, Peaty initially broke van der Burgh’s world record of 26.67, but FINA, the sport’s governing body, has yet to ratify the time due to an administrative error in testing the Briton for blood doping agent EPO.

In the fourth day of swimming in the world aquatic championships, Adam Peaty took two gold medals – one in the 50 meters breaststroke and the other in the mixed 4×100 meters medley relay.

He will be bidding for a third individual title in Kazan when the 200m breaststroke heats start on Thursday with the final on Friday night.

Peaty then backed up his individual win by helping the British team win the 4x100m mixed medley event in a new world record time.

“A performance like Peaty’s is what keeps me motivated”, said Van der Burgh.

Peaty’s titles also propelled Britain to their greatest ever set of World Championship results with only half the competition completed and four more days still to come.

The 50m breaststroke begins in Kazan on Tuesday with the final on Wednesday.

Overall, he was 26th fastest, with only the top 16 going through.

“I am feeling good in the water and my head is probably in a better space as well”.

American quartet Ryan Murphy, Kevin Cordes, Kendyl Stewart and Lia Neal had themselves wiped more than three-and-a-half seconds off the short-lived world record of 3:45.87 which Russian Federation set in winning the second heat.

“I’m still getting used to that but hopefully by next year in Rio, I’ll be up and running”.

Russian Federation s Vladimir Morozov, who had posted the world s joint fastest time this year coming into Kazan, was disqualified in his semi-final after leaving his blocks too early. Two-time defending champion Sun Yang of China won his heat but only narrowly advanced in sixth with 7:47.87.

Lauren Quigley reached the women’s 50m backstroke final with a seventh-placed semi-final finish in 27.88secs, but Hannah Miley could not follow suit in the women’s 200m butterfly as she finished 14th in 2:09.21. Ledecky has become the star of the Kazan pool after twice breaking her own 1,500m freestyle world record – and the long-distance expert was only competing in the 200m freestyle as an experiment at this level.