IN a sport accustomed to over-worked superlatives, Adam Peaty's gold-medal time in the 100 metres breaststroke is Beamonesque.

That adjective is coined from the long-jump final at the 1968 Olympics where the American, Bob Beamon, added 55 centimetres to the world best, taking gold with 8.90 metres, or 29 feet 2 3/4 inches in old money. It was predicted that his record might last 100 years.

Peaty's record was not unheralded like Beamon's. It was his third at the distance and his second of the Games. In all three rounds in Rio Peaty swam faster than anyone had ever done before. Cameron van der Burgh held the world mark at 58.46 from the 2012 Olympics and is still second fastest ever, but Peaty has progressively lowered the record to 57.13. Only three men have ever been inside 59.00 seconds.

Peatty has done this in the post skin-suit era which achieved more than 250 world bests, His time would have won Olympic 100 metres freestyle gold until 1952 and is faster than double Olympic champion Johnny Weismuller, who went on to play "Tarzan of the Apes". This involved swimming with crocodiles and hippopotami with armed minders rowing alongside, ready to shoot any creature that got too close. They never did.

Weismuller was not the only swimming "Tarzan". Buster Crabbe, 400m freestyle winner in 1932, also played Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, while three Olympic decathlon champions, Jim Thorpe (1912), Bob Matthias (1948 and '52) and Bruce Jenner (1976) all had subsequent film careers. Jenner married an ex-girlfriend of Elvis Presley and subsequently featured in Keeping up with the Kardashians, becoming step-father of the Kardashian girls. Last year the former All-American hero changed his name to Caitlyn and is now arguably the world's most famous transgender personality.

Jan Bartu, who won silver and bronze for Czechoslovakia in modern pentathlon, became a stuntman. He is now performance director of the British team in Rio.

The Olympics has also given women passports to the film industry. Sonja Henie, a Norwegian figure skater who won three Olympic titles, signed for 20th Century Fox and was among Hollywood's highest earners; Carol Heiss, the 1960 figures champion, played "Snow White"; and East Germany's former double gold-medal skater, Katerina Witt, featured in several films, including appearances alongside Robert de Niro and Tom Cruise.

Whether Peaty ends up in Hollywood or reality TV is for the future but the path to matinee idol is well-worn.

Peatty's record promises to be at least as durable as that of David Wilkie. The Scot took more than three seconds from the 200m breaststroke world best to win gold in 1976 with a time that would still have won bronze 18 years later, and survived as world record for more than four years. It was the Scottish record for 25. Wilkie's technological assistance was the first integral cap and goggles.

Technology has revolutionised sport. The aero dynamic suits of the British cycling team in Rio are the latest innovation. Chris Boardman, influential in their adoption, won the 1992 Olympic pursuit title wearing a Darth Vader-style helmet on a bike designed by Lotus at a reported cost of £500,000. And Scotland's Graeme Obree, who took the world record for the event from Boardman, did so on a bike which relied on his own engineering genius and the ability to cannibalise washing machine parts.

Tennis and golf are different games to those played by our fathers. Classic courses are redundant because hazards are in the wrong place due to advances in ball and club technology.

Swimming pools are now designed to eliminate ripples and waves, and all-weather tracks are worth perhaps a second per lap compared to cinders, and spike technology maybe a second more. The fastest 100m on cinders is almost half a second slower than Usain Bolt's world best - but that's as much a comparison of 1960 Olympic champion Armin Harry with Bolt.

Certainly, Roger Bannister sharpening his spikes on a laboratory grindstone as he did the night before breaking four minutes for the mile, puts athletics technology in perspective.

Video has revolutionised training, as have advances in conditioning, medicine, and bio science.

Yet despite predictions, Beamon's record lasted "only" 22 years. The legendary Jesse Owens' mark in the same event (one of six inside an hour) endured for more than 25.

Underneath celebration of great feats inevitably lies scepticism due to the spectre of drugs. The world 10,000m best set in 1993 by Wang Junxia who reportedly admitted to doping this year, fell in the opening Rio athletics final to Almaz Ayana. Her time was more than 40 seconds faster than that of 1948 men's Olympic champion Emil Zatopek, and would still have won gold in 1968.

Ayana is Ethiopian, a country with poorer anti-doping facilities than Kenya. This year Jama Aden, coach of Ethiopian 1500m world record-holder Genzebe Dibaba, and her sister Tirunesh (defending Olympic champion and third behind Ayana on Friday) was arrested on doping charges in Spain. Some 60 syringes, many full of blood boosting epo, were found.

At one time or another the charismatic Aden's charges have included indoor 1000m world record-holder Ayanleh Souleiman, double World indoor 800m champion Abubaker Kaki, and 2012 Olympic 1500m champion Taoufik Makhloufi. Aden was very briefly an "unofficial facilitator" to Mo Farah when Britain's double Olympic champion trained with Aden’s athletes in Ethiopia last year.