British Swimming announce bumper Performance Programme selection

Peaty, who won gold in the 100m breaststroke at Rio 2016 and recently broke his own world record in the event at the 2018 European Swimming Championships in Glasgow, is joined by fellow European gold medallists Freya Anderson and Ben Proud.

But Gold Coast Commonwealth Games 400m medley champion Aimee Willmott misses out, along with Hannah Miley, whilst Rio medallist Jazz Carlin is taking a break from the pool.

British Swimming National Performance Director Chris Spice said: "2018 proved a successful one for the World Class programme culminating in our home European Championships where we won our most medals in history (19 in Olympic events).

"This was on the back of a highly successful meet in Finland with our European Junior squad which has made this selection all the more difficult.

Swimmers were selected based on assessments of their past performances, measuring their chances of achieving medals at future Olympic games.

In addition to funding, athletes will be eligible for training camps and competition opportunities.

"We selected a much larger team at the European's than we normally would with seventeen new members selected to the senior team last season. As a result we unearthed some exciting youngsters and the focus is to maximise our efforts in the next two years," said Spice.

"We will be returning to our much tighter selection policy next year for the 2019 World Championships in Gwangju as we head into the final year of the 2020 Olympic cycle.

"We look forward to working with the athletes and their coaches to move our performances forward in this very important season.”