Simone Biles added gold in the women’s vault final Sunday to her haul of Olympic gold medals so far in Rio. The latter medal clinched the United States’ 1,000th Summer Olympics gold medal.
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Ryan Murphy led off the relay with a backstroke leg of 51.85 seconds – a world record for 100 meters – giving breaststroke teammate Cody Miller enough of a cushion to stay close to Britain’s Adam Peaty, the breaststroke world-record holder. The Americans’ time of 3:27.95 established a new Olympic record.
If Michael Phelps is the greatest male swimmer of all time, Katie Ledecky is well on her way to becoming his female counterpart.
“That’s when everything started to hit me, knowing that was the last time I’ll wear the stars and stripes in a race”, Phelps said.
“This is how I wanted to finish my career, the way I wanted to”, he said. “I’m super ecstatic with that, and just being on the relay with these fantastic women and fighting for Team USA and getting a gold medal, that’s the icing on top of the cake”.
The two highest gold-medal totals in an individual Olympics for the US came in years the country hosted – 1904 in St. Louis (76) and 1984 in Los Angeles (83).
Douglas’ all-around gold in made her the first African-American woman to win the event.
“I didn’t have too much pressure on me”.
Simone Manuel took a silver medal in the 50m freestyle at 9:03 p.m. ET and anchored the 4x100m medley relay to a gold medal at about 9:50 p.m. ET on Saturday night.
Manuel’s night isn’t over just yet, as she’s competing in the 4×100 medley relay with Dana Vollmer, Lilly King and Kathleen Baker.
“It’s really special that I could do it with the relay is unbelievable, just sharing it with three other women is icing on top of the cake”, said Manuel. It’s the first USA gold in the event since 2004.
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He ends his career with 23 gold medals, more than any Olympic athlete in history.
