With his infant son Boomer watching from the stands, cradled in the arms of his mother, Phelps’ fiancee Nicole Johnson, the greatest Olympian of all time shed a tear after two teammates, Ryan Held and Caeleb Dressel, broke down.
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“I didn’t think I was going to cry”.
Swimming second in the relay, Phelps took over from Dressel, just 0.02 second behind France and in a few powerful strokes, the 31-year-old gave his team the lead.
Phelps laughed his way through the medal ceremony, obviously delighted with the win and tickled at Held’s reaction (Dressel, another young swimmer, also cried a lot). “I had to fight back some tears myself”. In a most exhilarating fashion, the USA men earned gold in their first Olympic relay of these Rio Games. Phelps saw what was happening and offered a supportive hand around Held’s neck. Said Held: “I was just thinking about all my friends back in Raleigh and IL (his home state) and everyone cheering me on”.
“I’ve heard the national anthem thousands of times before, but there was something different about this one”, Held told The Charlotte Observer.
“They were making us cry”, said Phelps, who had a tear roll down his cheek while posing for photographers. “The tears just started rolling down my face”.
Phelps will have an opportunity at five more medals before these Olympics conclude.
Dressel, another Olympics rookie, joined the tearful Held on the podium once Phelps gave him the go-ahead.
This was Held’s first and last appearance at these games as he only qualified for the 4×100 freestyle relay event. By virtue of their performances in the preliminaries, SwimMAC’s Ervin and Jimmy Feigen both will receive a gold medal, too. “It is good to see the emotion out of those guys, and it shows they really do care”. He’ll swim the 200 meter butterfly semifinals, his signature event, tonight with an eye towards his 20th gold medal tomorrow in a likely showdown with the man that took it from him, South African Chad Le Clos.
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“Holy cow, it’s unreal, unbelievable”, he said.
