But, not content with all the Gold medals he already has, Phelps extended his tally to 21 God medals last night, with his overall medal count standing at a whopping 25, which is pretty unbelievable.
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After winning the individual event, he returned to the pool an hour later to ease the United States to victory in the 4x200m freestyle and win his third gold in Rio.
The oldest individual gold medalist in Olympic swimming history at 31, Phelps celebrated by hugging baby son Boomer after taking in the adulation of a raucous crowd.
Much of the talk ahead of the rematch in Rio had centered on Phelps’ revenge mission – and he didn’t disappoint – he smashed it.
Michael Phelps took back his 200m butterfly Olympic title which he lost miraculously at the London 2012 Olympics to South Africa’s Chad le Clos.
Le Clos, whose preparation for the Games has largely been overshadowed by the news that both of his parents were diagnosed with cancer, just missed out in fourth.
Two days ago, the swimmer won the gold medal in the 4×100 freestyle relay.
Leading the all-time Olympic medal count are Phelps at 25 (21-2-2), Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina at 18 medals (9-5-4), Soviet gymnast Nikolai Andrianov with 15 medals (7-5-3), Soviet gymnast Boris Shakhlin with 13 (7-4-2) and Italian fencer Edoardo Mangiarotti, also with 13 (8-4-1).
Ledecky took the most challenging step toward a feat that’s only been done one other time, holding off Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom to win the 200 freestyle and give the American star her second gold of the games.
The 200 fly was the one he really wanted, and it showed. But, at 31, he started to wobble in the last few metres and had to hold off a fierce late challenge from Japan’s Masato Sakai to get his hands on the wall first in a time of one minute 53.36 seconds.
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“There wasn’t a shot in hell I was losing that race and if I did I was leaving everything in the pool. I took it pretty fast and forced everyone and once I was ahead I was not going to let it out of my hands”.
