The 31-year-old extended his record as the most successful Olympian in history with six medals – five gold and one silver – at the Rio Games.
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Miller, who won bronze in the 100-meter breaststroke earlier in Rio, helped the USA set an Olympic record with a time of 3:27.95.
Phelps bagged his 23rd gold medal by helping the United States to victory in the 4x100m medley relay – the last race of the competition at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium. This is how I wanted to finish my career the way I wanted to.
Boosted by Peaty’s breaststroke leg Great Britain grabbed silver, with Australia taking bronze. Perhaps Phelps and his teammates just couldn’t bring themselves to let the curtain fall on this Olympics. Swimming the backstroke Murphy set world and Olympic records with a time of 51.85, and from there the Americans were in business.
In addition to Phelps, the US men’s medley relay included backstroker Ryan Murphy, breaststroker Cody Miller and freestyler Nathan Adrian.
Chalmers, who won the individual 100m freestyle gold medal, blitzed the last leg in 46.72 to lead the Australian team of Mitch Larkin, Jake Packar and David Morgan to a bronze medal behind silver medallists Great Britain.
Phelps dove into the pool in second place.
After the race was over, relative quiet returned to the arena.
“That’s when everything started to hit me, knowing that was the last time I’ll wear the stars and stripes in a race”, Phelps said.
“It turned out pretty cool”, Phelps said, another gold medal around his neck. This is an event the USA has owned: the Americans have set the past 10 world records in this relay, dating back to 1984 at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
The USA women also won the 400 medley relay, anchored by Simone Manuel.
The 31-year-old soaked up aspects of the Olympic experience he previously ignored – serving as a captain on the U.S. team for the first time, carrying the United States flag at the opening ceremony he had never before attended.
Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri produced a stunning front-running display to win the men’s 1500m in a time of 14:34.57, ahead of Connor Jaeger and Gabriele Detti.
There’s only one holdover from the 2012 gold medal team: Dana Vollmer.
“No matter what country you swim for, you’re indebted to Michael Phelps for bringing a lot of exposure to the sport and making it a little more mainstream”, Murphy said.
She almost made it a two-gold night, and a three-gold meet, but her time of 24.09 seconds in the 50 free was two-hundredths of a second behind gold medalist Pernille Blume of Denmark.
In true Olympic pan-cultural fashion, the next song: “Enter Sandman”. As a team, the American men and women finished with the most gold medals (16) and the highest overall medal count (33). The men’s race follows at 11:04 p.m. ET.
David Plummer, Kevin Cordes, Tom Shields and Dressel qualified the US a spot in the final; they’ll be able to collect gold medals, too. Just one hundredth of a second clear of Denmark, who took an excellent bronze.
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This year’s team returns only two members of the gold-medal team in London: Meghan Musnicki, 33, who rowed at Ithaca College in upstate NY, and Elle Logan, a Stanford alum. Also racing: China; Russia; Germany; and Brazil.
