“The 100-meter backstroke is actually the one that comes more naturally for me so that’s the one I was really gunning for”. Then he jumped out of the pool to receive his medal before heading back in to qualify for Friday’s 100-meter butterfly final.
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After winning his 22nd gold medal in the 200-meter individual medley on Thursday, the 31-year-old earned his 13th individual event win – which makes him the athlete with the most individual event wins since 152 B.C.!
Lochte, a year older, has 12 Olympic medals, six of them gold, and the 200 IM is his only individual event in Rio after taking gold alongside Phelps in Tuesday’s 4×200 freestyle relay. Lochte came in fifth. The discussion was stoked on Friday when American swimmer Ryan Lochte, Phelps’s friend and competitor, suggested Phelps would be back for Tokyo in 2020. “It was all about how much heart you had coming home, trying to get your hand on the wall first and thankfully I could”. “This is a special one to both of us”. Lochte, the world record-holder at 1:54.00, has won every world championships 200 IM since 2009.
Michael Phelps’ biggest frenemy isn’t buying the retirement chatter. He has said that the 100m butterfly could be his most hard race because of the heavy workload leading up to it.
Lochte leaves Rio as the second most decorated swimmer of all time, and says he needs a mental and physical break after Rio.
“Done. (South African co-silver medallist) Chad (Le Clos) asked me in the award area and the Dwyers were chanting “four more years”.
The heartwarming father-son moment was captured by a slew of press photographers, something Phelps said he was thankful for in the whirlwind of Olympic competition.
As Lochte said himself, “I’d be the Michael Phelps of swimming if he wasn’t there”.
Interestingly, Phelps’s mother, Debbie, also told the Today Show that there was seemingly a chance of Phelps making another run at Olympic gold. “I think I had a pound of spaghetti, and I am not a spaghetti fan”.
“I think moving to Charlotte was the right choice for my swimming”, he said.
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Phelps said in 2012 he was retiring but he came back for one last hurrah after feeling he wanted to bow out on his own terms.
