Michael Phelps added to his Olympic legend Friday night, winning the 100-meter butterfly to capture his third gold medal of the London Games and the 17th of his career.
Already the most decorated Olympian in history, Phelps started off Friday’s race — which he has said will be his final individual Olympic race, having promised to retire after this competition — trailing several swimmers.
But with basketball great Lebron James and Prince William among those looking on, the Baltimore native charged ahead late to win by 0.23 seconds over South Africa’s Chad le Clos and Russia’s Evgeny Korotyshkin, who finished with an identical time.
That margin, while slim, was still exponentially larger than when Phelps captured gold in the same event at the 2008 Beijing Games. Phelps won that race by .01 seconds by taking a quick, final stroke to catch a Serbian swimmer gliding to the wall.
“This one was I guess a bigger margin than the last two, so a step in the right direction,” Phelps told NBC after his latest win.
“It’s a pretty cool feeling. I have had a great week so far, and we have one more race tomorrow,” he added, referring to his final Olympic race Saturday as part of the U.S. men’s 4X100-meter medley relay team.
Phelps wasn’t the only American to make history in the pool Friday. Missy Franklin, 17, from Pasadena, California, earned her third gold medal, and fourth medal overall, in the women’s 200-meter backstroke, smashing the world record in the process.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Franklin said to NBC about her victories in London. “This has been the most incredible week, and I’ve never been happier.”
Another American teenager, 15-year-old Katie Ledecky, also earned gold in impressive fashion, besting her nearest competitor by more than four seconds in the women’s 800-meter freestyle.
France’s Florent Manaudou, 21, won the swimming competition’s fastest and, arguably, most glamorous event with a time of 21.34 (just a shade off the Olympic record) in the men’s 50-meter freestyle, his first ever Olympic final.
The United States’ excellence at the Aquatics Centre helped them pass China for the most gold medals, with 21, on the seventh full day of the Games. The Americans have 43 medals total, compared with 42 for the Chinese.
