Also on Day 8 of the games, Usain Bolt thrilled the crowd at Olympic Stadium in his first appearance of the games and Rafael Nadal’s bid for an unprecedented second Olympic singles gold medal ended with a thrill-a-minute semifinal loss to Juan Martin del Potro.
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You might not know about them, since they don’t count. “I’m retiring, but I’m not done done with swimming”.
“Getting off the bus and walking to the pool tonight, I pretty much felt myself starting to crack”, he said as he approached his final night of Olympic competition. Michael Phelps has been the most dominant athlete in the sport of swimming over the past decade. Only after a second drunken-driving arrest and six weeks of inpatient therapy did Phelps reconnect with his dad, who cheered on his son a month ago at the U.S. Olympic trials but wasn’t able to travel to Brazil.
“If I was still on top of the world it would be hard for me to go out”, he said.
He quit drinking, reconnected with his estranged father, got engaged, moved to Arizona with his longtime coach Bob Bowman, and became a father.
If that was the end, and Phelps insists it is, what a way to go out.
“This all started with one little dream as a kid to change the sport of swimming and try to do something nobody has ever done”.
On a victory stroll around the pool, Phelps and his teammates grabbed a sign that said, “Thank You Rio”.
“He’s found a different goal in his life with his family, but I think he’ll come back”.
He didn’t win a medal in Sydney, his best finish being fifth, but four years later in Athens the world truly took note.
Phelps dived into the pool in second place.
On the return lap, Phelps powered through the water with his windmill of a stroke, surging ahead of James Guy to pass off a lead to the anchor Adrian. I am very happy I came back.
While the record-holding swimmer has made it clear he doesn’t intend to race again in 2020 when the Games are held in Tokyo, Japan, we’d sure love to see him come back for one more go-round. Justin Rose of Britain is the third-round leader and will be trying to win golf’s first gold medal in 112 years. Phelps’s 13 gold medals in individual races means he has also surpassed the Greek Olympic legend Leonidas of Rhodes, whose previous record of 12 individual event wins was set in 152 B.C. when Leonidas was five years older than Phelps now is.
Phelps, 31, who is engaged to Nicole Johnson, was preparing to swim his final Olympic race in the 4×100 meter medley relay last weekend when something from Boomer caught his eye.
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Gregorio Paltrinieri stormed to Italy’s first swimming gold medal of the Rio Olympics with a brilliant victory in the men’s 1,500m freestyle on Saturday.
