Appearing before journalists after dead-heating for the silver medal in the 100 metres butterfly on Friday, the last individual race of his long career, the most successful Olympian of all time was peppered with questions as gold medallist Joseph Schooling of Singapore sat alongside him.
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“It was just a thrill to swim against Michael Phelps and all those guys”, Schooling said in a post-race interview.
Elsewhere, Ethiopian distance runner Almaz Ayana smashed a 23-year-old world record to claim gold in the 10,000m before New Zealand shot putter Valerie Adams suffered an agonising defeat as the Olympic athletics competition opened with a bang on Friday.
Iranian weightlifter Kianoush Rostami broke his own world record to win gold in the men’s 85-kilogram weightlifting event, clinching Iran’s first medal of the games. “And yeah. I’m ready to spend some time with [baby son] Boomer and [fiancée] Nicole”.
“This moment is not about me, it’s all about my coaches my friends my family that believed that when I was a six year old kid that I could do it”, he said.
Although Phelps noted that he was not happy about losing, he also mentioned that he was “proud of Joe”, who was in a “reflective mood”.
“I told him, ‘Four more years?’ and he said, ‘No way.’ If he changes his mind, that would be fun”.
Michael Phelps (USA) of USA poses with his silver medal during victory ceremony of Men’s 100m Butterfly at Olympic Aquatics Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on August 12, 2016.
With four gold medals at these games and 22 for his career, Phelps has an opportunity to pick up one more before he leaves Rio.
An unfortunate incident occurred however after he was told his goggles weren’t Olympic standard just before the race.
She called it “a testament to the vision that Bruce and I had three years ago when we set these goals, and we weren’t going to stop until we met them”.
“It hasn’t really sunk in yet”, Schooling said.
In the women’s 200-meter backstroke, Maya DiRado closed out her first and last Olympics with a win over Hungary’s three-time gold medalist Katinka Hosszu to notch her second gold in Rio. “No more. I said it a bunch before”.
In the blink of an eye, Ervin went from one end of the pool to the other in a furious dash, edging the defending Olympic champion, Florent Manaudou of France, by a mere hundredth of a second. Veteran sprinter Nathan Adrian took bronze. She also set two world records at the games. Although counting them has proved an inexact science, the U.S. Olympic Committee says the official count coming into Rio was 977 golds, a global high.
Turns out, it was swimming all along. “I’m happy with how things finished”, Phelps said.
The country has won 5 Olympics medals in total. Now, improbably, he’s back on the top of the podium again.
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“In many ways I felt I let a lot of people down by not winning”.
