Michael Phelps won two gold medals on Tuesday, avenging his 200 metres butterfly defeat from the London Olympics and then anchoring the United States 4×200 freestyle team to victory on a night of high drama and emotion in the pool.
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Phelps’ mother, Debbie, sounded bullish on her son competing in what would be his sixth Olympics where he’d be 35 years old.
After five hours of sleep, Phelps said he actually felt rather fresh for the afternoon preliminaries. Lochte still holds the world record at 1:54:00.
Ledecky was barely breathing hard. “She was the one I loved the most”.
At the time, Phelps had already swam in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and the 2004 Games in Athens, winning six gold medals in the latter.
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.
According to ESPN Stats & Information, the three-way tie for the silver medal in the men’s 100-meter butterfly is the first three-way tie for any medal in Olympic swimming history.
The 2012 London Games were supposed to be Phelps’ final Olympics as he retired from the sport. Now, improbably, he is back on the top of the podium again.
Another female Olympian made her mark Wednesday.
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“This whole day has been kind of insane because it’s all of these little last things that I’ve gotten to do, like my last warm-up with the girls at the training pool today”, DiRado said.
