Barring a catastrophic upset, it’s time to pencil Katie Ledecky’s name into the record book.
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The last British man to win an Olympic swimming gold was Adrian Moorhouse in the same event in 1988, six years before Peaty was born.
Ledecky has now won three total medals in these Olympics, two gold and a silver in the 4×100 freestyle relay. That was true this year, too, as some of the U.S.’ most high-profile stars had primetime slots: Swimmers like Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps won gold while gymnast Simone Biles dazzled viewers in gymnastics.
Ledecky, who won a silver medal anchoring the USA 4×100 freestyle relay Saturday night, has the 200 and 800 freestyle races coming later this week.
When Adrian touched the wall first in 3 minutes, 9.92 seconds, Phelps thrust his right arm in the air and looked toward his infant son Boomer, nuzzling in the arms of his mother Nicole Johnson, the roaring crowd blocked out by noise-canceling headphones.
Smith’s family celebrated her medal-winning race.
She is the third woman and sixth swimmer to win gold in both the 200 and 400 freestyle at the same Olympics.
The only drama was whether she’d take the world record even lower.
“The goal I set was 3:56 or better”, she added, “and to see a 56 up there is really good”.
It was a night of world records in Rio. They mean the world to me, so I want to make them proud.
“I knew I was the big favourite”. 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.
In all, six world records have fallen on the first two days of swimming.
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“I’d been so close to breaking that for the past two years and I knew I was due for a breakthrough”. Now that that’s a reality, that my times are that highly ranked, I feel like I have to shoot for a medal. She broke it twice in two weeks in August 2014 – the second time at the Pan Pacific Championships in Australia – but she had not bettered it since, until Sunday night.
