Swimming at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's 100 metre breaststroke Swimming at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's 100 metre breaststroke The men's 100 metre breaststroke event at the 2016 Summer Olympics took place between 6–7 August at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium. Great Britain's Adam Peaty defeated the field with a new world record to become the country's third gold medalist in this event, since Duncan Goodhew topped the podium in 1980 and Adrian Moorhouse in 1988. He jumped to an immediate lead, and never looked back, charging ahead of the field with his trademark high stroke rate to lower his own world record at 57.13. Peaty's time also gave
Swimming at the 1980 Summer Olympics – Men's 4 × 100 metre medley relay bronze medallists from the previous edition, West Germany—who won the silver medal also at the World Championships—and Canada respectively, meant that the field had opened. Sweden, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union were the most heavily favoured teams. Another ten National Olympic Committees were able to send teams to Moscow: Angola, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, East Germany, France, Hungary, Netherlands, Spain, and Vietnam. Favorites Soviet Union boasted the silver medalists in the 100 m finals hosted several days earlier in backstroke and breaststroke (Viktor Kuznetsov and Arsens Miskarovs respectively), while their butterflyer (Yevgeny Seredin) and freestyler (Sergey Kopliakov) had come fifth