On Tuesday, Phelps’ face bared a familiar scowl as he walked out on to the deck.
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Michael Phelps won the 200-meter butterfly on Tuesday night in Rio, the 20th gold medal of his historic Olympic career.
Ledecky scooped her second gold of the Games after holding off a fearless charge from Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom in the women’s 200m freestyle. And there’s more to come.
Ledecky regularly beats her competition by two to three percent, meaning if the distance swimmer was a Formula 1 driver, she would win by nearly three minutes.
As a squad, the USA had the highest score in each of the four events – floor, vault, balance beam and uneven bars. They beat the second-place Russians by a whopping eight points, the second largest margin of victory in Olympic history.
This was the second consecutive gold for the American women, and included two returning members from the winning 2012 team, Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman.
In a recent Under Armour video, Phelps was seen getting the treatment as he has been doing for years. Becoming a father himself for the first time. For decades, the Romanians or the Soviet Union dominated.
Le Clos, who won a 200 freestyle silver on Monday, reacted faster than Phelps at the start but it was Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh who led at the turn with Phelps second and Le Clos third.
On Tuesday night, in one of the most anticipated swim races of these Rio Olympics, Phelps and le Clos duked it out in a final le Clos predicted last summer would be “Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier”. Yeah, despite all that build up and ridiculous warm up routine, le Clos ended up coming in fourth.
Defending Olympic champion France was out front when Phelps dove into the water on the second leg, taking over for leadoff swimmer Caeleb Dressel.
Katinka Hosszu and Katie Ledecky struck further blows for girl power, but again it was all about Phelps, who later anchored the American 4×200 freestyle relay team to gold as the clock edged toward midnight.
With their races, the two biggest stars of American swimming also answered questions about themselves in the most direct way an athlete can: in the field of play. Sjostrom pushed her hard over the last 50 meters and won silver in 1 minute, 54.08 seconds.
This was expected to be her toughest individual race. “That was one of my goals”, she said.
Ledecky had smashed her world record in the 400-meter freestyle on Sunday night.
The golden girls dubbed themselves “The Final Five” in honor of Karolyi’s retirement at the end of the Olympics and the fact that the format is changing for Tokyo in 2020 so that only four team members will take part in the team competition. Are you also, like us, wondering just what kind of music is Michael Phelps listening to that gets him so pumped up to make such epic finishes at the Olympics yet again? He still figures on another seven races in his swansong Games.
It was surprising when Venus Williams lost her her first-round singles match on Saturday.
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“I guess the worst I felt was after the 400-free relay, having to be here the next morning for the 200 fly”, he said. “The better player won”.
