Michael Phelps tied for silver but missed the gold in the 100-meter butterfly final Friday night.
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Phelps, amazingly, tied with both Chad le Clos and Laszlo Cseh for the silver.
Michael Phelps congratulates Joseph Schooling after Schooling won the men’s 100m butterfly gold.
The 21-year-old Asian champion denied Olympic icon Phelps a fourth straight victory in the event, leading from start to finish to win in an Olympic record of 50.39sec.
It was purely a race against the clock for the 19-year-old, as she sliced nearly two seconds off her world record to win in 8 minutes and 4.79 seconds.
Saturday will be the final day of swimming for Phelps in Rio and the last opportunity to add more medals to his all-time Olympic record of 27.
After the medal ceremony, the pair were deep in conversation on the pool deck, and Schooling said he told Phelps the feeling was “out of this world”. “I don’t know what to believe, whether I actually did it or I’m still preparing my race”.
Ledecky joined Debbie Meyer as the only women to sweep the three longer freestyle events at the same Olympics. Shields made his Olympic debut in Rio and swam in the 200m butterfly and preliminary leg of the 4x100m medley relay.
“The Olympics are the pinnacle of our sport, and I have to wait another four years to have that moment, and I just wanted to enjoy it”, Ledecky said.
The frenetic finishes in the swimming pool capped a day that included a big escape by the US men’s basketball team and a stunning loss by the women’s soccer squad. His consolation: his bronze medal in the light flyweight division ends a medal drought for the American boxers that stretched to 2008. Now, improbably, he’s back on the top of the podium again.
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United States’ Katie Ledecky shows off her gold medal in the women’s 800-meter freestyle medals ceremony during the swimming competitions at the 2016 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 12, 2016, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We’ll finally get our chance to see the fastest man in the world.
