Phelps swam in the final of the event, the last event on Rio’s swimming program, with Ryan Murphy, Cody Miller and Nathan Adrian setting an Olympic record.
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Phelps retired following the London Olympics – disappointed with his performance and exhausted of the sport – but returned 18 months later in search of a better ending to more than two decades in the pool.
“This is how I wanted to finish my career”, Phelps said.
Phelps swam the butterfly third leg of a tight race, pushing the USA from second behind Great Britain up to first before freestyle specialist Nathan Adrian saw it home for gold in an Olympic record time of three minutes 27.95 seconds.
Turning back the clock in his fifth and final Games, Phelps produced a thunderous third leg of butterfly to restore his team’s lead after Britain’s Adam Peaty had threatened to rudely gatecrash his party. At times during the last week, Phelps shook his head in disbelief at the stream of victories.
When the race was over and the gold medal secured, Phelps pulled his teammates close in a huddle. His involvement in the 4×100-meter medley relay highlights a night full of medal action. Paltrinieri’s fellow Italian Gabriele Detti took the bronze medal in 14:40.86.
But back to Team USA, just before the men won gold, the US women’s team – consisting of Kathleen Baker, Dana Vollmer, Simone Manuel, and Lilly King – competed in their own relay, taking home gold and claiming the 1,000th gold medal for Team USA.
Kathleen Baker, Lilly King and Dana Vollmer joined Manuel in the historic victory, which came with a time of 3:53.13.
“It’s really special”, Manuel said.
As a team, the American men and women finished with the most gold medals (16) and the highest overall medal count (33).
The U.S. also won 33 medals at Sydney in 2000.
Even though the gap was so narrow, Halsall was also touched off by 100m champion Simone Manuel of the United States and Belarus’ Aliaksandra Herasimenia, one of the swimmers allowed to compete in Rio despite previously serving a doping ban. American Tori Bowie took silver. Greta Andersen won the 100 free and Karen Margrethe Harup took the 100 backstroke at the 1948 London Olympics.
Two lengths later and the U.S. was in the clear and heading for gold.
The night, though, belonged to Phelps, who walked out of the arena for final time carrying an American flag handed to him by his mother from her front-row seat, right next to Johnson and little Boomer. She tied for a gold medal earlier this week.
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The only way imaginable.
