With challengers all around, Phelps simply wouldn’t be denied.
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Lochte appeared in his fourth straight 4×200-meter freestyle relay Olympic final and has now won 12 Olympic medals in his career.
Afterward, Phelps kindly offered tips to le Clos, who was then 20, and the two even discussed getting together to go shark diving in le Clos’ native South Africa.
Phelps was drafted into the United States’ relay team following the afternoon heats and produced a strong anchoring leg after being handed a dominant lead. Phelps redeemed himself, beating silver medalist Masato Sakai with a time of 1.56.36. Phelps’ time was 1:53.01. “And doing the double is a lot harder than it once was in an hour, and what happened four years ago [the London 2012 defeat] is still with me”. “Having that come to an end, it’s weird, it’s insane to think about”, Phelps said. But when he decided about a year later to start competing again, the 200 fly was clearly the title he sought more than any other.
Phelps stormed to victory in the 200m butterfly on Tuesday night (Wednesday morning SA time), denying Le Clos a repeat of his London victory.
Ledecky scooped her second gold of the Games after holding off a fearless charge from Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom in the women’s 200m freestyle. He set his first world record in the same event a year later. “That was such a tough race”, she explained.
“When I came back I said that I wanted the 200m fly”, he said, adding that the realisation that this is his last Olympics was starting to sink in. “I just had to dig deep”. She crushed the world record in the 400 and everyone expects her to do the same in the 800.
He has one more race Tuesday night, anchoring the US team in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.
During the butterfly medal ceremony, someone in the crowd blurted out something that made Phelps laugh for a long time.
In the relay final, Phelps joined Conor Dwyer, Ryan Lochte and Townley Haas to hit the wall in 7 minutes 0.66 seconds.
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The Americans touched in 7:00.66, with Britain second in 7:03.13 and Japan in third after James Guy overhauled Takeshi Matsuda on the final leg.
