Welsh swimmer Jazz Carlin has won her second silver medal of the Rio Olympics after finishing second for Great Britain in the women’s 800m freestyle final.
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And while she finished nearly 12 seconds behind American teen sensation Katie Ledecky, Carlin hung on for silver ahead of Hungary’s Boglarka Kapas.
Ledecky also anchored the gold-medal-winning 800 freestyle relay for the USA and helped the 400 freestyle relay to silver.
The only previous woman to win the 200, 400 and 800 freestyles at the same Games was American Debbie Meyer in 1968.
“I hit all my goals right on the nose this week”, she said. “I just wanted to swim”, he said, dedicating his medal to “all the people who have supported me through the highs and the lows”.
There will be few better stories of triumph from adversity at these Games than Anthony Ervin, who won gold in the 50m freestyle 16 years after achieving the same feat at the 2000 Games in Sydney.
With four gold medals at these games and 22 for his career, Phelps has an opportunity to pick up one more before he leaves Rio. “Then I wanted to show a little bit of emotion for the effort I’d put in, for my friends, for my family, for those watching at home and in the stands”.
“She’s an incredible athlete and she is going so fast, it leaves the rest of us having to scrape for the rest of the medals”, Carlin told the Los Angeles Times.
“She’s doing times that women have never done before because she’s not afraid to think outside the box”, fellow Olympian Michael Phelps said. “I tried to keep it all under control, but there’s been a lot of tears these last 24 hours”.
Anthony Ervin of the U.S. reclaimed the mantle of fastest man in the water on 12 August by taking the Olympic 50m freestyle gold, a full 16 years after he first won it, and by the slimmest of margins.
Like many of his contemporaries in Rio, Schooling grew up idolising Phelps, he keeps an old photo of himself as a bespectacled teenager with the American that was taken at a meeting in Singapore after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He wound up in a three-way tie for second with Laszlo Cseh of Hungary and Chad Le Clos of South Africa.
– Spain’s Rafael Nadal and Marc Lopez won the first tennis final of Rio 2016, taking gold in the men’s doubles.
Astonishingly, all three touched out in 51.14 seconds, behind Schooling’s Olympic record 50.39 in the second dead-heat in a final in two days. She raced to eight minutes, 4.79 seconds to lower the world record for the fifth time.
Anthony Ervin became the oldest victor of an individual Olympic swimming medal at 35 when he won the 50-meter freestyle a full 16 years after he won it a first time at the Sydney Games as a teenager. Hosszu settled for silver in 2:06.05, while Canada’s Hilary Caldwell took the bronze in 2:07.54.
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Ledecky was practically racing against a yellow line on Friday night, which represents the Olympic record she set at the 2012 Olympics. “It’s hard to look beyond this week yet but I know once I get to Stanford (University) and start up there, I’ll sit down with (United States coach) Greg (Meehan) and set some new goals and see what we can accomplish from here”.
