Past year at this time, sports commentators were bemoaning the decline of USA swimming.
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At age 35, Anthony Ervin was something of a long shot to win the frenetic 50m freestyle at Rio 2016, but he did just that, and he did it an incredible 16 years after he first won the same event at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. He’ll attempt to win both the 100 and 200-meter races for the third straight Olympics.
“He’s too special. It’s not even once in a generation – it may be once in 10 generations that someone like Michael comes along”.
But the athletes saw something that the results didn’t show.
“I was just super excited to be on that relay and I’m sure that little extra bit of adrenaline is what pushed me to that record”, said Murphy, who broke the record of 51.94 set by American Aaron Peirsol in 2009. “One year from now [at Rio], no one will be talking about what happened here….”
And indeed, the team seems to have come together in a way that has obliterated last year’s disappointments.
The US also won gold in the women’s 4x100m medley relay while Denmark’s Pernille Blume and Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri claimed the first swimming gold medals for their respective countries at these Games.
“I was more emotional than 2012 but that’s a good thing”.
Simone Manuel made history by becoming the first African-American woman to win an individual swimming medal, but she didn’t stop there.
On the men’s side, Rafael Nadal was toppled by Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina, ending his bid for a second Olympic singles gold medal.
Rio Games double backstroke champion Murphy got the US off to the ideal start when he set a new 100-meter backstroke world record of 51.85 seconds in the first leg. The field also includes American Alex Naddour and Ukrainian Oleg Verniaiev, who was a narrow second to Japan’s Kohei Uchimura in the men’s all-around last week. Gabby Douglas, the Olympic all-around champion in 2012, is also in the final, as is defending Olympic uneven bars champion Aliya Mustafina of Russian Federation.
Katie Ledecky even upstaged Michael Phelps at the Olympics on Friday.
To put this in perspective, no other Olympian has more than nine golds.
Behind Phelps’ success in London was a man who didn’t want to be swimming, but didn’t know what else to do with his life.
Most of the USA swim team was in the stands to watch Phelps’ finale, including the biggest female star of the games, Katie Ledecky.
If that was the end, and Phelps insists it is, the numbers are simply astonishing.
He beamed as he ducked in late for a press conference with the victor, Joseph Schooling of Singapore, and the other silver medalists, Chad le Clos of South Africa and Laszlo Cseh of Hungary.
“Getting off the bus walking into the pool tonight, I nearly felt myself starting to cry”, Phelps said. That changed at the rehab center, he said, where he was surrounded by people who respected him as a person rather than a medalist.
In an interview recently, Lochte said, “I guarantee he will be there”, referring to the 2020 games in Tokyo. “It was a new experience for me”. “It makes us feel like we’re part of that legacy”.
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