Britain’s Adam Peaty failed to beat his own world record, but was happy to defend the men’s 100m breaststroke title at the world aquatic championships on Monday.

Peaty clocked a new championships record of 57.47 seconds with Kevin Cordes of the United States second at 1.32 back with Russia’s Kirill Prigoda third at 1.58.

The 22-year-old was delighted to defend the world title he first won in Kazan two years ago with plenty of support from the Budapest crowd.

“A lot of hard work goes into competing and the crowd were amazing, I want to thank everyone out there,” Peaty said after his win. “It was incredible, when I walked out I felt like I was in Britain, as everyone was cheering for me so much.

“I’m very happy, I put in a 26.5 seconds (for the first 50m), then built off that on the back end.”

Peaty had targeted his own world record of 57.13, set when he won the Olympic title last year in Rio de Janeiro, but was not disappointed to come up short.

“No, I’m still 1.5 seconds ahead of the rest of the world, it’s not the time it’s the way I did it,” he said.

“You don’t want to keep breaking it every year. “Obviously I can find areas where I can improve, for example, that was the turn tonight.

“The 26.5 is very promising, not many people can go out on 26.5 and come back. “I’m the only one who has been under 26.6 in the 50 m, so the way I swam, it is very encouraging.

“I need to have a few more 57 lows to get down to 56, but I’m just going to follow that curve now and see where it goes,” he added. “Maybe it will take a Tokyo environment (the 2020 Oympic Games) to do that, it will come. I know it’s definitely in there.”

Peaty will now look to also defend his 50 m world title in Wednesday’s final in his bid to repeat the breaststroke sprint double he achieved in Kazan.

His victory in the opening event of the evening’s session sparked another gold medal for Britain as half an hour later Ben Proud won the 50 m butterfly final. “We have quite a young team, with new faces after Rio, so it will hopefully give that a little bit of a push,” added Peaty.

Peaty breaks 50-metre men’s record

Britain’s Adam Peaty broke his own men’s 50-metre breaststroke world-record on Tuesday in the heats of the world aquatic championships. The 22-year-old clocked 26.10 seconds, lowering his own mark of 26.42 set two years ago in the semi-finals of the world champs in Kazan, Russia, on his way to winning the final.

Fresh from winning the men’s 100-metre breaststroke gold on Monday night, Peaty blasted out his world-record time to qualify for Tuesday night’s semi-finals. “I wasn’t going for a world record, I was just trying to qualify for the semis,” Peaty said.

It is the third time he has held the 50-metre world record in his career. His main rival in Wednesday’s final looks to be Cameron van der Burgh, who was only 0.44 seconds behind Peaty in the heats.