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Team USA is on the board. After not winning a medal in the first 24 hours of the Tokyo Olympics, the United States won its first gold on Saturday night (Sunday morning local time in Tokyo). Unsurprisingly, it came in men’s swimming. Chase Kalisz, 27, finished first in the the men’s 400-meter individual medley.
Kalisz was in second place until it was time for the breaststroke. That’s when he took the lead and never looked back. After staying in first during his freestyle, Kalisz won with a time of 4:09.42.
Caeleb Dressel is off on his quest for six swimming gold medals at the Tokyo Games, leading off an American victory in the men’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay.
Dressel gave the U.S. a lead it never relinquished, swimming the first leg in a blistering 47.26 seconds.
Blake Pieroni and Bowe Becker kept the Americans out front before Zach Apple turned in an anchor leg of 46.69 to leave no doubt at the end.
The U.S. won in 3 minutes, 08.97 seconds, the third-fastest relay in history. Italy took the silver in 3:10.11, with the bronze going to Australia in 3:10.22.
Dressel and Pieroni were on that 2016 gold medal-winning team, which also included Phelps. The 4×100 is venerable event, a race that is a big point of pride for Team USA. Phelps said on TV Sunday that these kind of wins collectively push the spirit of all American swimmers to go that much harder in the pool. It’s a rallying point.
And yet, this showing shouldn’t be a shock. For example, either the men or women on Team USA (and often times both) have medaled in the 4×100 every Olympics over the past 109 years. On the other hand, Emma Wyant and Hali Flickinger medaling in the women’s 400 IM marked the first time the United States had at least two people on the podium for that event since 1968.
There’s been a little something of everything for the U.S. so far.
To recap, here’s everyone who took a medal in the past two days:
• Chase Kalisz won gold in the 400-meter individual medley, one-upping his silver performance from Rio in 2016 and putting the U.S. back on top in an event it’s taken gold in during every Olympics since 1996 — except in 2016, when Kalisz finished second.
• Jay Litherland finished less than a second behind Kalisz in the 400 IM to capture silver.
• On the women’s side, 19-year-old Emma Wyant won silver in the 400 IM.
• Hali Flickinger was next behind Wyant and won bronze in the 400 IM.
• Kieran Smith, who came on strong during June’s Olympic trials, had a huge showing to snatch bronze in the 400-meter freestyle.
• The women’s 4×100 freestyle relay team of Erika Brown, Abbey Weitzeil, Natalie Hinds and Simone Manuel’s touched in 3:32.81, finishing .03 behind Canada to earn bronze. (Australia’s heavily favored quartet was favored for a reason: the Aussies’ gold medal-winning swim of 3:29.69 set a world record.)
• The men’s 4×100 team held off Italy and Australia on Monday morning to win gold and retain the Olympic title from 2016.
• Katie Ledecky took silver Monday morning in the 400 freestyle with a time of 3:57.36.
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