Additional edits called him “Michael Phelps Pool Boy” and said that “Le Clos was buried beneath Phelps’ medals”.
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A picture of Katie Ledecky, who took home gold in the 200m women’s freestyle on Tuesday, getting an autograph from Phelps 10 years ago circulated on social media on Tuesday night.
Phelps has now won a total of 25 Olympic medals in his illustrious career, with 21 of them being gold, and Lochte has now won 12 total Olympic medals. Ledecky was nine when the picture was taken.
Phelps clinched victory in the 200-meter butterfly on Tuesday night, holding off the challenge of silver medalist Masato Sakai of Japan and Hungary’s Tamas Kenderesi, who placed third.
Little could Ledecky have known that, a decade later, she would be a victor of multiple gold medals herself. He was tipped to be one of Phelps’s main rivals going into the tournament.
As hard as it may be to believe, this wasn’t Ledecky’s first brush with an Olympic gold medal victor.
The most decorated Olympian of all time, who had come out of retirement to compete at this games, was determined to win back the 200m Butterfly title he lost in London 2012 from South Africa’s Chad Le Clos.
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“He was the reason I swam the butterfly”. Both now hold three individual world records (Phelps for the 100- and 200-meter butterfly and the 400-meter individual medley; Ledecky for the 400-, 800-, and 1,500-meter freestyle).
