Michael Phelps dropped both the hammer and the mic on the Rio Olympics Saturday night, turning in a scorching butterfly leg in the men’s 4x100m medley relay that helped his team secure gold and set a new Olympic record on the last night of Olympic pool swimming in Brazil.
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“With the people we have in the sport now, I think you are seeing it”, Phelps said.
“Walking down the warmup pool deck, I started to get choked up”.
“When I went down, I thought, ‘Oh my God, that is it.’ I just got up and wanted to stick with the guys and stay strong”, Farah said after the match.
If it wasn’t for Michael, I don’t think I could have gotten to this point.
Two lengths later and the United States was in the clear and heading for gold followed by Team GB which would eventually claim silver and Australia bronze.
“That’s something I’ve been going for for a long time”, said Murphy.
– Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) August 14, 2016Is it really the last time we’ll see @MichaelPhelps in an olympic pool?
He entered the water second for the Americans after Ryan Murphy began the race with a world-record 51.85 second split in the backstroke.
Phelps took the lead in the third leg, the butterfly, before Nathan Adrian maintained it during the last leg as the United States won ahead of Britain and Australia.
In the previous race, Simone Manuel anchored the US women’s 4×100 meters medley team to the 1,000th gold medal in her country’s Olympic history.
Like Phelps, Ervin well knows the dangers of retiring without a real backup plan. “And it turned out pretty cool. It’s a dream come true”.
“I wanted to be like him”. “It’s just a ideal way to finish”. Medal hopes China and Canada were off the podium. That brought the race to Phelps, trailing Britain by a little more than half a second. “We had a team that had a serious chance of winning a medal but we have to accept that we were fifth and use that in the future”.
The American women absolutely dominated the world in the 4x100m medley relay, taking down the top countries by nearly two full seconds.
After receiving their medals, the swimmers all walk over to the camera banks – and the USA athletes hold up a banner that reads, “Thank you Rio”.
For him, Phelps’ legacy is shown by the increase in the sport’s U.S. profile.
Denmark’s Pernille Blume wins the 50-meter freestyle, narrowly edging American Simone Manuel. Miller, also making his first Olympic appearance in 2016, earned a bronze medal in the 100m breaststroke.
Hosszu, who set a world record in winning 400m medley gold then added the 100m backstroke and 200m medley titles, led through the first 150 meters, with DiRado clinging to her shoulder.
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.
He has been adamant all week that this is the end, no matter what Ryan Lochte or his mother might say about Tokyo in 2020.
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“I don’t want to (guess if) the retirement is going to be permanent or not”, Ervin said of Phelps.
