Considering that this was Phelps’ 20th Olympic gold medal, he more than deserved to do that and proved that he still dominates the sport.
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That was nearly two seconds in front of silver medallist Kosuke Hagino of Japan, the 400m individual medley champion who powered from fifth at the final wall to touch in 1:56.61.
While it was a good night in the swimming for team GB, with two silver medals added to the haul, the night belonged to Phelps.
This time, she was limited to a single gold, which came for swimming the preliminaries of the 4×200 freestyle relay.
“Anytime I can be on a relay – whether it’s morning, night, in practice, whatever it is – it means the absolute world to me”, said Franklin, who didn’t even qualify for the final of the 200 freestyle and has only one individual event left after the relay.
Phelps qualified for his first Olympics as a 15-year-old at Sydney in 2000 in the 200 fly. My legs are hurting.
Phelps said he’s been texting with former Baltimore Ravens star Ray Lewis, talking about the right way to end his career.
The 200 fly was the one he really wanted, and it showed.
“I can definitely say [Phelps will race in Tokyo] because I guarantee he will be there”, Lochte told the Today show.
He was lauded by the Rio crowd, with one banner proclaiming “Phelps Greatest Olympian Ever”.
He has one more race Tuesday night, anchoring the US team in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. “Probably what Boomer was thinking”, they tweeted with the photo of Phelps kissing his baby.
Later, Ryan Murphy, who took gold in the 100m backstroke earlier this week, and Jacob Pebley, making his Olympic debut, advanced from the qualifying heats into the semifinals of the 200m backstroke.
He finished second in his semi-final to qualify fifth fastest for Friday’s final.
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The sports world has run out of ways to describe Michael Phelps. With a time of 1.56.36, 4/100ths of a second, the American swimmer won in front of the Japanese, Masato Sakai. About an hour later, Phelps anchored the American 4×200-meter freestyle relay and won his 21st. This time there was to be no repeat of 2012 and Phelps won by four hundredths in 1 minute 53.36 seconds. When asked how he plans to tackle his last race, Lochte said he will focus on recovering.
