Rio 2016: Why Olympic Nan upstaged the brilliant Adam Peaty on his big day

Though 74-year-olds are not generally inclined to take to Twitter, Peaty's gran had 2,000 followers by the time the race was won

Peaty celebrates with the Union Jack flag (Getty)

The Peaty family were backed into the corner of a corridor a few hundred yards from the place where their boy had destroyed the opposition in 57 seconds. They were discovering what happens when one of your own becomes an Olympic sensation in these times.

Every conceivable aspect was covered with the swimmer’s parents Mark and Caroline and girlfriend Anna Zair, including their boy’s competitive tendencies in family Monopoly games, his cooking, his chest size, his driving test and Anna’s flapjacks.

It was a particular tour de force from Mrs Peaty, who was best equipped to deal with the machine gun battery of questions. Yet she still found herself eclipsed – and not even by their son.

The star of the Adam Peaty’s big night was the woman now known to every self-respecting Briton as #OlympicNan, the Olympic 100m breaststroke gold medallist’s 74-year-old grandmother Mavis Williams, for whom the press interrogation would have been a breeze.

Mrs Williams spent the early hours of Monday morning being filmed watching the final by a BBC TV crew. And though 74-year-olds are not generally inclined to take to Twitter, she had 2,000 followers by the time the race was won, leaving her daughter-in-law trailing in her wake.

“Yes, she has 2,000 followers and I’m only up to about 80,” said Mrs Peaty. It was put to her that this might reflect a competitive gene in the family. “No, I’m not competitive. You’re competitive,” she said, looking at her husband.

Mr and Mrs Peaty speak to the media (Getty)

“You like to win. Adam likes to win games too. As a young child he used to get bored.”

Mr Peaty, who had struggle to get a word in until now, nodded. “He’d chuck the Monopoly board up in the air,” he added. Mrs Peaty was up to 400 followers by Monday afternoon, though Mavis was soaring away – to well over 6,500.

And Twitter was only the half of it. “Meet 'Olympic Nan,' The British Grandmother Taking Social Media By Storm,” reported Forbes, in a piece by a correspondent whose biography said she “writes about tennis, soccer and other European sports.” The British Olympic Association could not have scripted it better.

The term ‘Nan’ often belongs in working class households and if evidence were needed that the Peatys don’t have airs and graces, consider the fact that the trip out here was their first time on an aircraft.

“I was ok until I walked down that [boarding] corridor. Then my heart started to pump,” said Mrs Peaty. Her husband, who has a disability, had not even seen the 20-year-old compete at a major race until now.

It says something about the struggle of sports beyond the all-consuming football to be heard and appreciated that a young man who has just shattered the world record twice in 48 hours to take gold is upstaged by his own grandmother.

The Americans don’t need to reduce swimming in this way. Nor, too, the Australians where the competitors are known and their performances analysed. Far more interesting than the driving test Peaty passed at the age of 18 is the way his coach Mel Marshall has worked like hell to improve the technical excellence of his dive.

This carved out yet more competitive advantage which made Monday night’s win the nearest you will get to a racing certainty. There’s been a mental dimension, too. Among the last words that Marshall said to Peaty before he stepped out to deliver on Monday night were ‘Burn the Boats.’

This was a concept that the new GB head coach at British Swimming, Bill Furniss - who is crediting with sharpening the squad psychologically – introduced. “Bill said something really vital to me,” Peaty related. “He just said ‘Burn the Boats.’ So you imagine doubt is a boat, you burn it and then attack.

When you are facing this opposition, or thousands and thousands of soldiers, you’ve got to attack and you’ve got no choice to retreat.” Peaty’s self-belief is one of the most striking aspects of meeting him. You only had to look into his eyes in the media/athlete mixed zone after his semi-final swim on Saturday night to see that he did not consider defeat remotely possible.

He has travelled to that level from a place where doubt – fear, actually – clouded his mind. When he was 15, Peaty almost “hated” finals, such were his nerves.

“When I was younger, it’s almost like you want to puke, you think, ‘I just don’t want to do this,” he said. “It matters how much you train and how much you train your mind. You can’t just train your body and not your mind. So we’ve done a lot of work in training the mind these past couple of years.”

Peaty shows off his gold medal with pride (Getty)

The biggest cause of 15-year-olds dropping off the elite sport register, though, is adolescence and all that the awkward years bring. Marshall experienced a little of that when she had moved into coaching after a career which took her to Number 1 in the world.

“He has just grown up. That's the thing,” she said. “People take time to grow up and get that feeling of 'I do want to do it.’ Those stories about that? He was never a bad lad. We had one argument when he was 14 about putting his fins on, but apart from that you have a quiet conversation with him and you help him understand his way forward, and he will always listen. And that's the one biggest thing about him, he's listened and he has absorbed, and that's why he is where he is.”

There is something divinely democratic about reaching the pinnacle in sport. Those who do have something indefinable about them, certainly – “he just had something. He had a sparkle, Marshall observes. But the winners are almost always those who work the hardest and last in from training: Cristiano Ronaldo, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, George Best. “There are not many like him in that respect,” said Marshall.

“I did a montage for him before we left in terms of the work that he has done and the journey he has been on. He is always the last man standing no matter what it is. If I say ‘go again’ he will say ‘yeah’.

If I say ‘go again’, he will say ‘yeah’. If he says ‘I can’t’, I will say ‘go again’ and he will say ‘yeah.’ That’s the biggest thing. If this message gets out to a wider audience and to kids then it should be that dreams really can come true.”

The obstacles facing the next generation in Derby, where Marshall and Peaty work at the City of Derby club, have included the proposed closure of three swimming pools, including its own at the Queen’s Leisure Centre. Derby City Council’s decision left the club’s treasurer appealing for a new pool to train in.

Such are the real challenges in the real world of a sport fighting to be heard. No-one was complaining about Nan taking all the headlines though.

She had a quiet time on Twitter on Monday and there have been no appearances since telling Peaty: “You made it, you’d hard work paid off. So proud love Nan x.” She could be forgiven her absence, though. Everyone was in need of a rest.