Caeleb Dressel capped off his legendary Olympic showing Saturday night atop the podium yet again.
The former Gator won his fifth gold medal in the 4x100 men’s medley relay with a world-record breaking 3:26.78 time, .73 seconds ahead of team Great Britain. Dressel swam the third stroke, the butterfly, in a staggering 49.5 seconds.
The 2020 US team beat its 3:32.29 qualifying time by 5.51 seconds.
The United States has taken home gold every year in the event since its inception in 1969. The 2020 team simply kept the tradition going.
The US team started the race with Ryan Murphrey in the backstroke and headed into Michael Andrews’ stroke in first place. Andrews maintained a 1.61m/s pace in the breaststroke and gave Dressel a chance to take a prominent lead in the butterfly. Zach Apple sealed the win in the freestyle.
Dressel joins Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz and others in the elite group of swimmers to have won five gold medals in the Olympics.
Contact Faith Buckley at fbuckley@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @_faithbuckley
Faith is a third-year journalism student specializing in sports media. She hopes to one day work as a play-by-play announcer for the National Hockey League.
