Olympics’ most decorated athlete: Phelps wins 22nd gold

RIO DE JANEIRO—Michael Phelps seized another slice of Olympic history Thursday with a dominant victory in the 200m individual medley at the Rio Games, his fourth straight in the event.

Phelps became the third Olympian to win the same individual event at four straight Games, joining discus thrower Al Oerter and Carl Lewis in the long jump in achieving the feat.

Lurking in second until the end of the breaststroke third leg, he surged home on the closing freestyle lap to win in 1min 54.66sec.

That was almost two seconds in front of silver medalist Kosuke Hagino of Japan, the 400m individual medley champion who powered from fifth at the final wall to touch in 1:56.61.

China’s Wang Shun was third in 1:57.05.

Phelps’ old foe Ryan Lochte led at the halfway point, but the world record-holder in the event couldn’t hang on and finished fifth.

Brazilian contender Thiago Pereira, buoyed by an ecstatic crowd, led after the opening butterfly lap and was equal second at the halfway point, but faded to finish seventh.

Phelps claimed his 22nd Olympic gold medal and his fourth at the Rio Olympics.

The most decorated Olympian of all time was back in the pool later on Thursday in the 100m butterfly semi-finals.

source: sports.inquirer.net

French gymnast’s horrific leg break chills gymnastics arena

RIO DE JANEIRO — French gymnast Samir Ait Said landed awkwardly on a vault, and a sickening snap echoed throughout the arena. A split second later, he was clutching his contorted left leg, his tibia fractured and his Olympics over.

Said was trying to fly over the vault and complete two backflips in a pike at men’s qualifying Saturday. The injury highlighted the dangers of a sport that steps into the world’s spotlight every four years and led some to question if the current scoring system is making gymnasts push themselves too far.

Said was attempting his second vault when he crumpled. He used one hand to hold his leg just below the knee and put the other one to his head as he grimaced in pain in the moments just after the fall. Medical personnel rushed to help him, placing him on a stretcher and carrying him off the podium to loud applause from the crowd.

“It is catastrophic … our mental state is very bad but we each have a target and we have to carry on for ourselves,” teammate Cyril Tommasone said.

The International Gymnastics Federation moved away from the 10.0 scoring system a decade ago, favoring a new format that splits each gymnast’s score into two parts. The first score is based on the difficulty of skills a gymnast completes. The second score is based on how well they execute them.

Many gymnasts try to pack as many skills into their routine as they can to pile up points. German gymnast Fabian Hambuechen, a four-time Olympian and two-time medalist on high bar, wonders if the sport has become almost too dangerous, with gymnasts attempting skills they haven’t yet mastered, a stark contrast from the old system that put an emphasis on perfection instead of daring.

“It’s a pity that gymnastics developed like that,” Hambuechen said. “It’s always more, more difficulty, more risk, higher. Everyone wants new records and stuff so it’s getting dangerous. That’s what really is annoying. I don’t like the system anymore. So I hope that it will change after Rio again.”

He misses the days before the difficulty score was implemented and thinks returning to the old scale would make things safer for the athletes.

“I’m one of the guys who still loves the 10.0,” he said. “That was a simple system. It was like everyone had the chance to get the high score of 10.0 with different ways. Now everyone knows if you want to have a high “D” score you have to do these skills and these skills are sometimes too dangerous for some people.”

French team leader Corrine Moustard-Callon didn’t have many details on Said’s injury, but lamented the terrible way his Olympics ended after years of hard work.

“He made a technical mistake,” Moustard-Callon said. “He is in the hospital with a doctor now. We will give more news when we have it. We don’t know what happened, except that it was his tibia. We will do more exams to see if it is just the bone.”

Said’s injury wasn’t the only one that ended Olympic hopes. Germany’s Andreas Toba tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during the floor exercise.

“I cried like a little kid,” Toba said. “The injury on my knee is big, but the emotional injury is way bigger.”

Toba competed in the pommel horse after the injury, a gutsy move that impressed his teammates and the crowd.

“That was amazing,” Hambuechen said. “It’s an honor to have someone like him on the team.”

Many of the gymnasts who were competing in the same division were jarred by Said’s injury, but none were particularly surprised. While the dangers of contact sports like football are constantly talked about, people sometimes don’t think about the risks gymnasts take when propelling their bodies through the air.

“Everybody knows gymnastics is the hardest sport in the world,” American gymnast Danell Leyva said. “And if you don’t know it, you don’t know about gymnastics.”/rga

source: sports.inquirer.net

Olympics: Record-smashing start for Aussie women

Australia’s women lowered the 4x100m freestyle world record to capture their country’s second gold on the opening night of swimming competition at the Rio Olympics.

Emma McKeon, Brittany Elmslie, Bronte Campbell and individual world record-holder Cate Campbell clocked 3min 30.65sec to hold off the United States, who claimed silver in 3:31.89 with Canada third in 3:32.89.

Australia improved on the world record of 3:30.98 set by an Australian quartet at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on July 24, 2014.

“Definitely my favorite race ever, in an Olympic final with my sister and two girls I have known since I was 12, 13 years old and a gold and a world record. You can’t ask for more,” said Bronte Campbell. “Every kid dreams of it, it’s what we always hoped for.”

Elder sister Cate, who set the individual 100m free world record in July, said the Aussies’ status as favorites hadn’t led to over-confidence.

source: sports.inquirer.net

Phelps facing toughest challenge yet

Michael Phelps has been swimming against the tide all his life. Time and time again he has proved the doubters wrong, setting the standard for Olympic achievement with his 18 gold medals.

But now, almost two years after retiring from swimming and two months shy of his 29th birthday, the American is plunging into uncharted waters by attempting a comeback where the risk-reward ratio is heavily stacked against him.

If all goes well, Phelps could be back on the winner's podium at Rio, although he insists he is still undecided about whether he wants to go to the 2016 Olympics.

If it goes wrong, he will join a long list of great athletes who were lured back to competition but failed to reproduce the form that took them to the top of their chosen sports.

His legacy is already assured. Nothing he does in the future will take away from what he did in the past but as Muhammad Ali, Mark Spitz, Michael Jordan, Bjorn Borg and Michael Schumacher all discovered, it can still become a permanent footnote.

Phelps has not yet given a full explanation for his decision to come back or his plans for the future. That will come on Wednesday when he and longtime coach Bob Bowman face the media before the April 24-26 Grand Prix meet in Mesa, Arizona, where he will make his return.

A global sporting icon, Phelps has already amassed a fortune through his endorsements so money is unlikely to be the driving motivation to get him back in the pool for the gruelling training required to be an Olympic swimmer.

Nor is he likely to top his past achievements so anything he does is likely to be less than before. He won six gold medals at Athens in 2004 and an unprecedented eight at Beijing in 2008 when he was at his absolute peak.

At the 2012 London Games he won four gold and by the law of diminishing returns would be hard-pressed to match that in Rio, when he will be 31, past the age when most elite swimmers have hung up their goggles but not too old to be totally discounted.

At the Athens Olympics, Inge de Bruijn of the Netherlands won the women's 50 metres freestyle gold medal days before her 31st birthday.

Four years later in Beijing, Jason Lezak teamed up with Phelps to win gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay at 32 while Dara Torres won three silvers in the Chinese capital at age 41.

For Phelps, his biggest asset is his physique and perfect technique. He stands 1.93m (6ft 4in) tall but has a wingspan of 2.01m (6ft 7in) giving him greater pulling power in the water.

But the natural evolution of swimming looms as his biggest obstacle. Even if he can match his best times, his younger opponents are getting faster all the time.

This week's meet will offer few real clues to what Phelps might do in Rio, if he were to go that far. He has deliberately picked a relatively light programme of three races - 100m freestyle, 100m butterfly and 50m freestyle.

"It's just a start," Bowman told Reuters last week.

The first big test for Phelps will come in August when the U.S. national championships, which will double as the trials for next year's world championships in Russia, are held in California.

Then in mid 2016, the U.S. Olympic trials will take place in Omaha, Nebraska.

Phelps only needs to finish in the top six in either the 100m or 200m freestyle at the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials to make the relay team and if he did, he would have a realistic chance of adding to his collection of Olympic medals.

For mere mortals, that would be a lifelong achievement but for Phelps, he is likely to want to swim at least one individual event, possibly the 100m butterfly which would also secure him a place on the medley relay and a chance at four golds in Rio.  — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com