The United States won the men’s 4×200 metre freestyle relay yesterday, with Michael Phelps swimming the anchor leg to take his 21st gold medal.
Advertisement
Hungary’s Tamas Kenderesi took home the bronze ahead of le Clos, who ran out of steam and finished fourth.
He swims in the finals of the 200 meter butterfly on Tuesday against rival South African Chad le Clos.
After a midnight Saturday win over Australia that took only 35 minutes, Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross square off against China’s Yuan Yue and Fan Wang at the same time Monday.
After routing Senegal and setting Olympic records in points, margin of victory and assists, the USA women’s team next faces Spain at 12 p.m.
Entering the arena like a gladiator, his face a granite mask of concentration, Phelps dominated a grudge final le Clos had billed as “Ali versus Frazier” to become the oldest individual swimming gold medallist in Olympic history at 31.
“That was a really tough race and it hurt really badly”, Ledecky said.
Phelps had already carried the Americans to victory in the 4×100 free relay.
The defending Olympic champions lost to Britain at the 2015 World Championships, but led from the early stages to win by 2.47 seconds and retain their crown. As far as we can tell, she is still the oldest female swimmer to win an individual Olympic gold medal.
Phelps essentially spent the next 100 seconds or so on a victory lap, the crowd’s cheers growing louder with each stroke.
With challengers all around, Phelps simply wouldn’t be denied.
Phelps out-touched Masato Sakai, who raced to a silver medal, by 0.04 seconds.
Advertisement
Sydney Pickrem, born in Dunedin, still living in Florida, another of the teenagers on the Canadian swim team, wound up an impressive sixth in the final of the women’s 200 metre individual medley.
