Michael Phelps notched up his Olympic gold medal total to 21 on day four of Rio 2016.
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Remarkably, Phelps has won more than twice as many Olympic gold medals as the athlete second on the list, former Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, who has nine.
Phelps, who won the 19th Olympic gold medal of his career on Sunday and helped the USA 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.
After the medal ceremony, Phelps rushed to the crowd and kissed his fiancée. That event was my bread and butter.
“There wasn’t a shot in hell I was losing that race”, he added. That allowed Chad le Clos of South Africa to stunningly win gold in an event that Phelps had dominated for the better part of a decade. But, at 31, he started to wobble in the last few metres and had to hold off a fierce late challenge from Japan’s Masato Sakai to get his hands on the wall first in a time of one minute 53.36 seconds. Hungary’s Tamas Kenderesi, who beat Phelps by 16 hundredths of a second in their semifinal, took the bronze in 1:53.62. I really wanted that one back. He is a very good racer and is not afraid of putting it on the line. I knew where he was all the time. They won the women’s 10-meter synchronized platform title to make China 3-for-3 in the competition so far. These events are the Men’s 200m individual medley event and the Men’s 100m butterfly event.
The Hungarian known as the “Iron Lady” earned her third gold medal of the Rio Games with a victory in the 200 individual medley.
While Phelps has announced that Rio will be his last games, Lochte could keep swimming for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo as he looks for more medals in what would be his age-36 year. “To have three golds, it’s unreal”.
Britain’s Siobhan-Marie O’Connor took silver in 2:06.88.
Despite the draw, the top-ranked United States still finished atop Group F.
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His 21st gold came later Tuesday night after swimming the anchor leg on the 4×200-meter relay.
