Lochte’s one minute, 57.38 seconds was the fastest time among the qualifying heats.
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Asian champion Schooling, 21, completed a wire-to-wire victory to deny Phelps a fourth successive title in the event, winning in a Games record 50.39sec as Phelps, amazingly, tied with both Chad le Clos and Laszlo Cseh for the silver.
A little more than half-an-hour later, having collected his gold medal, Phelps returned to qualify fifth fastest for Friday’s 100m butterfly final – another event he won in Athens, Beijing and London.
This marks the third gold medal for the 19-year-old Ledecky since the games started, but another historic gold medal win was earned by American cyclist Kristin Armstrong!
RIO DE JANEIRO – There will come a point in Thursday night’s final of the 200-meter individual medley when Ryan Lochte will look to the lane next to him, see the greatest swimmer who has ever lived, and try to push himself into a gear he must wonder if he even has.
But the eyes, one final time, will be on Phelps and Lochte.
“I want what’s best for this team”, Franklin said. Cate was under her own world-record pace at the turn, but had nothing coming back and fell all the way to sixth. “Being able to finish how I won is just something very special to me and this is why you are seeing more and more emotion on the medal podium”, said Phelps.
Phelps said he didn’t know how matching that feat might rank in his impressive list of Olympic achievements.
Before Phelps and Lochte go at it in the pool, Katie Ledecky swims the preliminaries of the 800 freestyle, her last individual event in Rio.
“Of course I wanted gold like any other athlete, especially at the Olympics, and it was so close”, Efimova said. “This place is going to be loud tomorrow – I’m looking forward to it”. “I only get to put a racing suit on two more times after tonight”.
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Russia’s Evgeny Rylov led the way in the 200 backstroke, followed by China’s Xu Jiayu, Australia’s Mitch Larkin and Americans Ryan Murphy and Jacob Pebley.
