Michael Phelps captured his 20th Olympic gold medal in devastating fashion, sealing victory with a kiss, before adding a staggering 21st before the night was over. They’ve combined to win more than 80 championship medals in Olympic and World Championship competition. Swimmer Mark Spitz and track star Carl Lewis, who both have nine golds.
Advertisement
Haas joined Conor Dwyer, Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps to win gold in the 4x200m freestyle relay final at 7:00.66. Lochte now holds the top two times in history but Phelps got the best of him at the 2012 Olympics in London and at this year’s U.S. Olympic trials.
Phelps won the 12th individual Olympic Gold medal of his career in the 200-meter butterfly Tuesday night. Phelps has had to take more of a generalist’s approach to training – but he’s Michael Phelps.
You may have missed the memo, but Phelps actually retired following London 2012, but he decided enough most definitely wasn’t enough as he came out of retirement recently to defend his titles at the Rio 2016 Olympics, and he’s done exactly that.
The 200 fly was the one he really wanted, and it showed.
With challengers all around, Phelps simply wouldn’t be denied.
That split-second decision got him to the wall ahead of everyone else, by a mere four-hundredths of a second. If one (or both) of them failed to medal.
In the relay, the bulk of the drama for Phelps came on the pool deck, where he ripped his swim cap just before it was his turn to swim.
Lochte, 32, has said he’s going to keep swimming “as long as I keep having fun”.
Soon after winning the relay, cameras caught Phelps motioning his hand from one side of his neck to the other, and seemed to say, “I’m done”. He competed against the South African Chad Le Clos.
It made me want to crawl through the TV and punch le Clos’s lights out.
Phelps missed those worlds because he was serving a six-month suspension for a second DUI.
The 19-year-old, who finished behind Sjostrom in her semifinal heat, took the race to her opponents to finish in 1 minute 53.73 seconds.
Advertisement
Hosszu, the “Iron Lady” who withdrew from the 200 butterfly earlier on Tuesday to prepare for the individual medley final, is entered in one more individual event, the 200 backstroke. “That event is kind of like my bread and butter and that was the last time I’ll ever swim it”.
