Living up to the hype: Caeleb Dressel win 1st individual gold medal

TOKYO — In an Olympics wherever galore of the favorites person faltered, Caeleb Dressel lived up to the hype.

Dressel claimed the archetypal idiosyncratic Olympic golden medal of his vocation with 2 furious laps of the excavation Thursday morning, winning the 100-meter freestyle implicit defending champion Kyle Chalmers.

As is his style, Dressel dove into the excavation and came up with the lead. He was inactive up astatine the lone flip, and turned distant the Aussie’s bid for a 2nd consecutive gold.

Dressel’s winning clip was an Olympic grounds of 47.02 seconds — a specified six-hundredths of a 2nd up of Chalmers, who had to settee for a metallic this time.

The bronze was claimed by Russia’s Kliment Kolesnikov (47.44), who added to his metallic successful the 100 backstroke.

The archetypal 3 golden medals of Dressel’s vocation were each successful the relays — 2 successful Rio de Janeiro, different successful the 4×100 escaped relay astatine the Tokyo Games.

Now, Dressel has earned 1 each by himself.

He climbed atop the lane rope, a look of wonderment connected his face, and held up the scale digit connected each hand.

No. 1 indeed.

Dressel’s golden was the 2nd of the greeting for the Americans, who got a astonishment triumph from Bobby Finke successful the Olympic debut of the men’s 800 free.

Also winning golds: Australia’s Izaac Stubblety-Cook successful the men’s 200 breaststroke and China’s Zhang Yufei successful the women’s 200 butterfly.

Finke’s pulled retired his triumph with a dazzling burst of his velocity connected the last lap.

Germany’s Florian Wellbrock snatched the pb from Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri connected the last flip, with Finke lurking backmost successful fourth.

But the American turned connected the speed at the extremity of the 16-lap race, passing each 3 swimmers up of him to instrumentality the gold.

“I had nary thought I was going to bash that,” Finke said. “I noticed with 10 meters disconnected (the last turn) I was catching a small spot of ground, and that was the lone information I needed.”

Finke’s winning clip was 7 minutes, 41.87 seconds, conscionable 0.24 up of Paltrinieri. Mykhailo Romanchuk of Ukraine touched successful 7:42.33 to instrumentality the bronze, knocking Wellbrock backmost to fourth.

Over 2 swims, Finke knocked astir 6 seconds disconnected his idiosyncratic champion coming into the Olympics to locomotion distant with a historical gold.

He wasn’t reasoning astir the symptom until helium touched the wall.

“Your caput conscionable benignant of disappears and you’re blocking it retired astatine the end,” Finke said.

The men’s 800 freestyle was added to the Olympic programme for these games, marking the archetypal clip that approximate region was contested by the men since determination was an 880-yard contention astatine the 1904 St. Louis Games.

Mirroring Finke’s finish, albeit implicit a overmuch shorter distance, Stubblety-Cook rallied connected the last thigh to walk Arno Kamminga of the Netherlands, who went retired accelerated and tried to clasp on.

The winning clip was an Olympic grounds of 2:06.38, giving the squad from Down Under their 5th golden of the swimming competition.

Dressel’s triumph pulled the Americans up of the Aussies with six golds successful Tokyo. They besides led the wide medal tally with 20.

Kamminga was nether world-record gait done the archetypal 150 meters, but helium faded to the metallic successful 2:07.01. The bronze went to Finland’s Matti Mattsson successful 2:07.24.

American Nic Fink finished fifth.

Zhang turned successful a dominating show to triumph China’s archetypal swimming golden of these games successful the women’s 200-meter butterfly. Her Olympic-record clip of 2:03.86 enactment her much than a assemblage magnitude up of the brace of Americans, Regan Smith and Hali Flickinger.

The U.S. swimmers dueled backmost and distant for the silver, with Smith pulling up astatine the extremity to interaction successful 2:05.30. Flickinger earned the bronze successful 2:05.65.

In the last lawsuit of the morning, Katie Ledecky was swimming for different golden successful the 4×200 escaped relay, but the Americans were expected to look a large situation from Ariarne Titmus and the almighty Australian women’s team.