Rio
de Janeiro: Michael Phelps again proved that he is the undisputed king of Olympics
as e won his 20th and 21st Olympic gold medal putting the total count of his
Olympic medal tally to 25 on Tuesday.
Phelps made up for one of the
rare losses in his brilliant career by winning the 200-meter butterfly, a
triumph that sent him climbing into the stands to kiss his 3-month-old son
Boomer. An hour later, he returned to take what amounted to nothing more than a
triumphant victory lap in anchoring the 4x200 freestyle relay, the crowd's
deafening roar growing louder with every stroke.
This was another performance for
the ages, but Phelps has done it so many times that nothing else
would have been fitting. It came on a night that American teammate Katie
Ledecky picked up her second gold of the Rio Olympics on the way to what could
be a historic run of her own in the pool.
Phelps now has 25 medals in
all, and three more races in Rio to add to his almost unimaginable total.
The 200 fly was the one he really
wanted, and it showed. With challengers all around, Phelps simply
wouldn't be denied. After touching the wall first — by a mere four-hundredths
of a second — he held up one finger. Then he sat on a lane rope, egging on the
roaring crowd at the Olympic Aquatics Center with both hands, before
emphatically pumping his fist.
Tears welled in his eyes during the
medal ceremony — until somebody in the crowd cracked him up. Then, during the
customary stroll around the pool to pose for
photographers, Phelps broke ranks and bounded into the stands to
plant a kiss on Boomer, the son who symbolizes just how much Phelps' life
has changed since a second drunken-driving arrest two years ago.
Phelps held off Japan’s Masato
Sakai with a time of 1 minute, 53.36 seconds, but that number was of little
concern.
The only thing that mattered was
getting to the wall first.
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