Leonidas of Rhodes would recognize a kindred spirit in Michael Phelps of Baltimore.
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It was, indeed, a stellar performance and Phelps nailed it with grace.
Phelps, competing in his fifth and final Olympics, he says, won the 200 butterfly in a time of 1 minute 53.36 seconds, while Chad le Clos, the man who beat him in this event in 2012 in London, faded badly in the final 50 meters and ended up fourth.
There is plenty of documentary evidence to attest to the dominance of Phelps, victor of a record 21 golds and 25 medals in an astonishing career spanning five Games that is far from finished.
Rio de Janeiro: Michael Phelps headed back to the pool in his bid to add to his remarkable 21 golds.
“It’s a lot harder because I’m older”, he said before the Rio games opened. “I took it out pretty fast and kind of forced everybody to try to do that”. “That was probably one of my most challenging doubles”.
Katie Ledecky’s dominance continued Wednesday night with her anchoring an authoritative American victory in the 800-meter freestyle relay.
Lochte is now tied with American swimmers Jenny Thompson, Dara Torres and Natalie Coughlin, who each have 12 Olympic medals.
“We all have…different sponsors so I think he had to wear just an all-black cap, so we reversed it and put on. Hopefully I can keep it rolling one more time”. It was only one-hundredth of a second slower than her gold-medal time in the individual 200 free Tuesday night.
Belgian coach Ronald Gaastra discussed what has made Phelps the most dominant swimmer of our era.
An Olympic commentator recently said Ledecky “swims like a man”.
The next time Michael Phelps will be in the pool will be on Thursday, as he hits the pool three times.
‘You’re going to bring tears to my eyes now, ‘ the Olympian said when asked about kissing Boomer after his latest solo race. That’s basically what the ancient historians had to do, some to more reliable results than others. Japan’s 22-year old Daiya Seto had his picture taken with Phelps in Japan 14 years ago. Once I was ahead I knew I wasn’t going to let it out of my hands.
“Tonight that 200m fly was really great”.
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At 31, Phelps is the oldest individual gold medalist in Olympic swimming history, according to ESPN Stats & Info. And thanks to him, it was a memorable night for the sport.
