Iron-man Bobby Finke and the US women’s medley relay team shattered world records in golden performances as the Olympic swim meet ended in exhilarating fashion on Sunday with the US on top again.
Floridian Finke took down Sun Yang’s 12-year 1,500m world record as he retained the gold medal in the lung-busting event before the US women smashed their previous world mark for gold in the medley relay.
The golds saw the US finish with eight at the top of the swimming medal table, one more than second-placed Australia whose ambitions of ruling the Olympic pool for the first time since Melbourne 1956 were quashed.
Photo: Reuters
However, it was by no means an American shut-out, with the US men’s medley relay team suffering their first defeat ever at Olympics meets dating back to the 1960 Rome Games in a febrile atmosphere at La Defense Arena.
China, anchored by the human missile Pan Zhanle, took the gold ahead of the US team, whose talisman Caeleb Dressel took his first minor medal from a previously uniform set of nine golds.
“I feel like for a team USA, the expectation is gold,” said Dressel who swam the third butterfly leg of the relay. “That was a close race, came down to the wire, and they had four great splits, we had four great splits, and they were faster, simple as that.”
Sarah Sjostrom finished the Games on a huge high after claiming the women’s 50m freestyle in 23.71 seconds, the evergreen Swede’s two-gold haul surpassing all returns at her previous four Games.
“This was definitely my best [Olympics],” said the 30-year-old, who took the first of her three golds at Rio 2016.
“I’m definitely going to continue swimming for many years, but I mean, how can I top this ever?” she said.
Following Sjostrom’s gold, Finke won the 1,500m in 14 minutes, 30.67 seconds, shaving 0.35 seconds off Chinese swimmer Sun’s previous mark.
He finished four seconds clear of Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri, who took silver eight years on from his 2016 gold at Rio.
“I had a pretty decent lead at about the 300[m] and I knew I had to keep going. Hopefully try to make the guys hurt a bit trying to catch up with me,” Finke said. “They started catching up with me and I started to get a little worried, but I decided to keep pushing and as long I could keep a little bit of a distance I knew I was in a good shape for the race.”
Wiffen took bronze days after stripping Finke of his 800m crown to become Ireland’s first male Olympic swimming champion.
France celebrated another medal with bronze in the men’s relay medley, finishing third on the table thanks to Leon Marchand’s four individual golds.
Yet in the end it was the US on top again, as they have been at every Olympic swimming meet since the 1992 Barcelona Games.
Regan Smith, Lilly King, Gretchen Walsh and Torri Huske made sure of it with a world record swim of 3 minutes, 49.63 seconds in the women’s medley relay, with Australia taking silver and China bronze.
“It’s awesome to see everybody improving and just an awesome way to cap off the meet,” King said.
Additional reporting by AFP
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