Phelps and le Clos’ rivalry has played out in the public eye for nearly two years now and this race felt like a culmination of sorts.
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“Everybody has their own race strategy of what they do”, Phelps said afterward. “I just knew there wasn’t a shot in hell I was going to lose that race”. Le Clos took that as a shot. Hungary’s Tamás Kenderesi took home the bronze, while le Clos finished in fourth, meaning he didn’t medal at all.
Hosszu, who withdrew from the 200m butterfly earlier on Tuesday to prepare for the evening race, is entered in one more individual event and could equal the women’s record of four solo swimming golds at a single Games set by East Germany’s Kristin Otto in 1988.
It might have been those four laps that pushed him to swim another four years, though, to this very point in time: the 2016 Rio Olympics 200-meter butterfly final. He now has 24 overall medals, also an Olympic record.
And the night was only beginning for 31-year-old Phelps. Just shy of midnight in Brazil, he anchored the men’s 4×200 freestyle to another gold medal.
Phelps has reduced his competition schedule in Rio as he focuses on butterfly and relay events. She didn’t dominate this race like she did on Sunday, when she broke a 400-m freestyle world record and beat her closest opponent by almost five seconds.
Still in the pool, the world’s most decorated Olympian turned to the crowd–which included the exuberant NBA stars of the US men’s basketball team–and raised his arms in the air, basking in the adoration while beckoning any challengers.
The 200 fly is the one event that Phelps has swum in all five of his Olympic Games. He was the youngest American swimmer in 70 years and the fifth-place finish was a great start, but more of an amuse bouche, if you will. Oleksandr Pyatnytsya tested positive for the steroid turinabol and was retroactively disqualified from the London Games and ordered to return his medal, the International Olympic Committee said.
“Coming into Rio I didn’t have any Olympic medals so I would have been okay with any colour”, she said.
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“It’s remarkable, not just his age but everything that’s transpired since London and before London and the whole totality of that”, said Bowman. Somebody asked me where that ranks, and I ranked it number two.
