Following his win in the 200m butterfly on Tuesday, Phelps has now earned 12 individual gold medals to go with the nine team golds during his Olympic career.
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Phelps beat Japan’s Masato Sakai by just four hundredths of a second to take the 200m butterfly and later anchored the USA 4x200m freestyle relay team to victory. “Finally he’s going to do it, Ryan Lochte is going to beat Michael Phelps in this event in the games, and Phelps might not even make the podium!”
Should Phelps advance, and given his performances thus far it seems like a certainty, he can shoot for gold medal No. 22 in the medley final on Thursday night.
In the same event at London in 2012, Phelps took the gold medal and Lochte won silver. Le Clos shadowboxed next to Phelps before their semifinal Monday and couldn’t take his eyes off of the American all week when they shared the same room. Both the stars also discussed to go together to a shark dive in South Africa. The U.S. has won 2,399 medals over the course of all the summer Olympics the nation has ever competed in, 977 of them gold. “Hopefully I can keep it rolling one more time”.
Phelps has won more golds in the pool than China’s men and women combined, and he has not finished yet.
He later brought the American team home as anchor in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, holding on at the end for a comfortable two-and-a-half second win and a twenty-first gold medal. “I’m just honored and privileged to have the chance to race alongside him”.
And the apprentice got the better of the master here in Rio, as Schooling won the 100 metres butterfly in a time of 50.39 seconds, leaving Phelps in a THREE-WAY tie for second. Since 1988, Greece has been the only host country not to win a swimming medal – in 2004.
2012 Olympic champion Nathan Adrian really turned things around Tuesday night in the 100 freestyle semifinals.
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Entering the arena like a gladiator, his face a granite mask of concentration, Phelps dominated a grudge final le Clos had billed as “Ali versus Frazier” to become the oldest individual swimming gold medallist in Olympic history at 31.
