Lilly King and Yulia Efimova’s Olympic rivalry was never destined to stay confined to the pool at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium, not with King’s sudden prominence as a doping vigilante.
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The competition between the two got off to a testy start when Efimova wagged her finger at King following a semifinal win last Sunday. “This completion [of the program] is a relief because I love racing, but this was more like a war”. King split a 1:05.70 on her swim as the second leg on the relay, keeping her team in excellent position to finish in first.
“Why are they discussing only Russians, not another country?” But Efimova herself actually beat King by almost three-quarters of a second head to head in their leg of the relay.
Lilly King, the 19-year-old American breaststroker who called out twice-banned Russian rival Yulia Efimova and then defeated her for the gold medal earlier this week, ended her Olympic Games on Saturday night with another gold medal and more bold words.
‘I’m just not a fan’.
Efimova was booed regularly in the swimming arena and says she is now reconsidering whether to return to Southern California, where she has trained for the past few years.
“It just proves you can compete clean and still come out on top with all the hard work you put in behind the scenes, behind the meet, at practice and weight sessions”, King said after the race.
She said the group was held up and confronted by people who had guns and knives. “[King] is young. She doesn’t know sometimes how life is going on”, Efimova said. She has maintained since her 2013 failed test that she did not know that a supplement she was taking contained a banned substance.
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King seemed to nab the final word in the pool, when US took home the gold in the Women’s 4x100m medley relay on Saturday night, with Russian Federation placing sixth. “I hope that she changes, changes her mind and everything”.
