Tokyo: American Caeleb Dressel won two gold medals in a day at the Tokyo Olympics to finish off one of the greatest swimming performances in the history of the Summer Games on Sunday. Dressel won the men’s 50m freestyle final at the Tokyo Aquatics Center before coming back again to lead the USA to a 4×100-meter medley relay top.
Dressel swam the butterfly leg as the USA set a world record with a time of 3.26.78s surpassing the 3:27.28s mark they had set at the 2009 Rome World Championships. Dressel had Ryan Murphy, Michael Andrew and Zach Apple in the company.
Great Britain’s Luke Greenbank, Adam Peaty, James Guy and Scott Duncan took silver with 3.27:51s while the Italian quartet of Thomas Ceccon, Nicolo Martinenghi, Federico Burdisso and Alessandro Miressi rounded off the podium in 3.29:17s.
Caeleb Dressel finishes the Tokyo Olympics with five gold medals.
🥇 50m freestyle
🥇 100m freestyle
🥇 100m butterfly
🥇 4x100m freestyle
🥇 4x100m medley pic.twitter.com/aHR63t7yjv— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) August 1, 2021
Earlier, Dressel raced swam to the 50 freestyle gold for his third individual title of the Tokyo Olympics. The American swam with an Olympic record of 21.07s ahead of Frenchman Florent Manadou (21.55s) and Brazilian Bruno Fratus (21.57s).
With five gold medals, Dressel joins Americans Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz and Matt Biondi, as well as East Germany’s Kristin Otto, as the only swimmers to win as many as five golds at a single Olympics. Dressel’s other gold medals came in 100m butterfly, 100m freestyle and in 4x100m freestyle relay.
