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Cupping: The newest trend for Rio Olympics athletes

USA gymnast Alex Naddour, 25, and Belarusian swimmer Pavel Sankovich are also fans of the procedure.

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Phelps, who won the 19th Olympic gold medal of his career on Sunday and helped the US men’s team to victory in the 4×100 meters freestyle relay, is one of a number of Olympic athletes practicing “cupping”, an ancient Chinese healing practice.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – With the Olympic swimming finals ending in the early morning hours, Michael Phelps has a quick turnaround before he’s due back at the pool. And, not surprisingly, times get slower as an athlete ages.

The 31-year-old appeared sore and was subdued during a brief session with reporters. “I was standing on the block while Caeleb (Dressel) was coming in and I honestly thought my heart was going to explode out of my chest”.

Every Olympics seems to have trendy items meant to help athletes, from high-tech swimsuits to the bright kinesio tape that made a scene in the London 2012 games.

“In the Olympic Games it’s not always only about the stars who we know already”.

“It causes blood vessels to dilate and increases blood flow”, said Glatter, an emergency physician at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital, who is in Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics. To have one swimmer in his 30s contend for a medal is unheard of.

On the heels of his 19th Olympic gold medal, news of the American swimmer’s net worth has hit the web and according to a report, he’s one of the highest paid Olympic athletes. Cseh is expected to battle for bronze with a predicted time of 50.7 seconds.

Ledecky, targeting a rare 200m, 400m and 800m Olympic freestyle treble – surged home to touch the wall in 3min 56.46sec, smashing her own world record of 3:58.37 set in the Gold Coast, Queensland in 2014. Phelps also posted a shot of himself on Instagram being cupped past year. With a positive result against Colombia, the women’s team will be in prime position to repeat as gold medal winners for the fourth consecutive summer games and become the first women’s team to win a World Cup and Olympic gold in back-to-back years.

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Sutherland estimates that Le Clos, Phelps and Cseh will be the only swimmers in Rio to post times under 1:53 seconds in the 200-metre butterfly. He finished behind Hungary’s Tamás Kenderesi (1:54.73) and Australia’s Grant Irvine (1:55.64). His best time in London was 1:57.35 and 1:55.07 since. Franklin managed only the 12th-best time in the 200 freestyle during afternoon preliminaries, and it looks as though it will be a struggle just to get past the evening semifinals, with only the top eight advancing to the final.

Olympics-Swimming-Phelps takes his 19th Olympic gold