Team USA sets world record in medley relay to close out Olympic swimming with most gold medals


NANTERRE, France — The U.S. women closed out their Olympic Games emphatically with a gold medal and a new world record in the women’s 4×100-meter medley relay on Sunday night.

Regan Smith, Lilly King, Gretchen Walsh and Torri Huske finished in 3:49.63 and beat the rest of the field by more than three seconds.

Australia (3:53.11) took silver and China (3:53.23) earned bronze.

Their gold was the eighth for Team USA, which pushed the Americans past the Australians, who tallied seven in the pool. The U.S. has won more swimming gold medals than its peers in every Olympics since 1988. Walsh admitted afterwards that she knew going into the relay that they could get Team USA to the top of the gold medal count. Neither King or Smith said they had any idea. King was asked how much it meant to beat the Aussies.

“It matters because we like to win,” King said. “But we’re just here to race and do what we do best.”

Earlier Sunday, the U.S. men earned silver in the men’s medley relay — the first time in the history of the event that the Americans didn’t win it (excluding the boycotted 1980 Games). It was a disappointing meet overall for the American men; distance swimmer Bobby Finke was the only man to win an individual event, and he didn’t do that until the final night of competition. Star sprinter Caeleb Dressel didn’t win any individual medals, despite entering the Games as the reigning Olympic champion in three individual events. A number of young swimmers failed to qualify for the finals in their events.

“We compete against the best in the world,” U.S. men’s head coach Anthony Nesty said. “Yes, we want our athletes to win gold medals, but the other teams have great athletes as well.”

Nesty said that everyone involved will need to go back and look at everything involved in the preparation for the meet and what happened here to figure out why so many swimmers swam faster at U.S. Olympic trials in June than they did at the actual Games.

“Our goal is always to to match our times or be better,” he said.

The hope, Nesty said, is to make sure the times are faster and the medals are more golden four years from now in Los Angeles.

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(Photo: Quinn Rooney / Getty Images)





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