Golden Finale For Michael Phelps Takes Him To 23 Golds & 28 Medals

Michael Phelps closed out the Rio Olympics and a career that stands in a pantheon of its own in the only way imaginable: with victory in the 4x100m medley relay with United States teammates who helped to grant the most decorated Olympic in history the 23rd gold of his career for 28 medals in all from four Games.

So extraordinary has the 31-year-old Baltimore Bullet been that Planet Phelps ranks 5th among nations on the all-time swimming medals table at the Olympics since it all began in 1896. Stretch it to all sports and he makes the top 40 nations.

But this is no arena in which to be timid of giants and so it was that Britain’s Chris Walker-Hebborn, Adam Peaty, with a monster split of 56.59 on breaststroke, James Guy, who gave Phelps a stroke for stroke race on butterfly, and Duncan Scott, an 18-year-old with a huge future, brought the last, closest fight to the GOAT and his crew on the way to silver in the medley relay to make Rio the most successful Games for British swimming in the modern era.

With 1 gold and 5 silvers, Britain exceeded the previous best tally of five medals at boycotted Moscow 1980, only London 1908 and seven medals in pioneering days when a handful of nations swam a higher count.

Imagine that: 28 medals, 23 golds. Could Michael fathom it? “No, no. I honestly don’t know when I will,” he opined, eyes welling up and already red from the tears shed. The gold count was “insane,” he added.

Ryan Murphy (USA) – by Patrick B. Kraemer

With Peaty having set a monumental world record of 57.13 to win the 100m breaststroke last Sunday, the USA knew that it needed to get off to a great start. Ryan Murphy delivered just that with the eighth world record of the eight days of swimming: 51.85sec, inside Aaron Peirsol‘s 51.94 from Rome 2009 and all that. That left Britain, in sixth, nursing a deficit of 1.83sec.

In went Peaty. His coach has already talked about “Project 56” and Peaty’s ambition to take the solo world record on breaststroke below 57sec. Relays are faster than standing starts but at 56.59, Peaty’s split is 1.8sec swifter than any other man has swum. Cody Miller, on his way to a 59.03 split for the USA, hardly knew what had hit him as Peaty, having clawed back the deficit with every passing stroke, drew level with 20m remaining and zoomed past.

The gap …

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