Aside from questions about Rio, the specter of doping also has hovered over these Olympics, with more than 100 Russian athletes banned because of alleged state-sponsored drug use and 271 didn’t receive approval to compete from the International Olympic Committee until Thursday.
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“I’m honored to be chosen, proud to represent the US, and humbled by the significance of carrying the flag and all it stands for”, Phelps said. He is the first male American swimmer to qualify for five Olympic Games.
Only Michael Phelps could steal the spotlight on a night three world records were smashed at Olympic Aquatics Stadium. In 2004, 17-year-old Bolt went out in the first round of his only event, the 200m. Rio Olympics 2016 TV Channel Schedule is on NBCSN.
Phelps, 31, retired in 2012, but returned to work in 2014, to ready himself for Rio.
The flag bearer’s preppy blazer had battery-powered electroluminescent panels on front and back, meant to make the U.S. Olympic Team logo on the chest, and the “USA” on the back, glow.
Phelps’s Olympic career reached it zenith in Beijing, where the 23-year-old not only won eight gold medals in eight events – the most ever by a competitor at a single Games – he set world records in seven of his races in the process. Vollmer started swimming again as “me time” away from her son, Arlen.
Ledecky is bidding to become the first woman since Debbie Meyer in 1968 to win the 200m, 400m and 800m free golds at the same games.
However, it remains to be seen if that kind of success in Rio could earn Ledecky the household-name status and commercial value attached to Phelps.
Michael Phelps competes on his way to winning the gold medal.
He ultimately eclipsed Spitz when the Americans won gold in the 4×100 medley relay, an event they’ve always dominated. He is, however, earning comparisons to another all-time US great: Ryan Lochte.
Caption + Caeleb Dressel and Michael Phelps, left, from the United States, celebrate winning the final of the men’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay during the swimming competitions at the 2016 Summer Olympics, Sunday, Aug. 7, 2016, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The hype around Dressel comes despite an improbable two-year hiatus as a 17-year-old. “I just couldn’t hold back the tears”. “I wanted swimming to be something that I loved, something that I was motivated to do for myself”, he told Sports Illustrated.
The late N.C. State basketball coach Jimmy Valvano said in his most famous speech that “if you laugh, you think and you cry, that’s a full day”. Start with Dressel, whose first Olympic swim would thus be leading off a relay?
The fundamental swim question is why so many times have dropped so precipitously since the 2009 era of insane plastic suits.
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There will also be new American stars such as Simone Biles, who’s expected to bring a dazzling degree of difficulty to women’s gymnastics. But soon team United States of America fought back and decimated their lead.
