The 31-year-old secured his fifth title of Rio 2016 as he teamed up with Ryan Murphy, Cody Miller and Nathan Adrian to set a new Games record of three minutes 27.95 seconds. After Miller finished his leg of breaststroke, Phelps raced ahead of the competition in the butterfly, so that Adrian could close out the night with a gold for the team.
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Phelps walks away with five gold medals and one silver, to run his career-best tally to 28 total Olympic medals – 23 gold.
“Getting off the bus and walking into the pool tonight, I nearly felt myself starting to cry”.
Murphy set the pace in the first leg of the men’s race, setting a new backstroke world record of 51.85 seconds, as Britain’s Chris Walker-Hebbon finished his stint in sixth. “Twenty-four years in the sport, and we are finishing up tonight”.
Michael Phelps revealed that he had to hold back tears as he took to an Olympic podium for the final time on Saturday, having battled with his emotions throughout his last day as an Olympian.
But Vollmer’s butterfly averted a crisis and Manuel brought them home in 3:53.13 nearly two seconds ahead of Australia with Denmark taking bronze.
The women’s quartet of Kathleen Baker, Lilly King, Simone Manuel and Dana Vollmer made history, but were made to work.
Less than an hour before, its women’s 4x100m relay medley team made their country the first to win 1,000 gold medals at the Summer Olympics.
Elsewhere in the pool Saturday, Pernille Blume of Denmark took gold in the women’s 50m freestyle, edging out 100m freestyle victor Manuel – who finished second.
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World champion Gregorio Paltrinieri blazed to gold in the men’s 1,500m in the absence of defending champion Sun Yang, who crushed out in the heats blaming a cold, the Italian smashing a quality field to win in 14:34.57.
