Team USA stormed to victory at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre today and set a new world record of 3:26.78 in the men’s 4x100m medley relay.
Ryan Murphy launched into an early lead in backstroke, but teammate Michael Andrew couldn’t hold off the challenge against Team GB’s Adam Peaty and dropped a few seconds behind the British swimmer.
However, Caeleb Dressel made a stunning comeback to gain the lead against Team GB with teammate Zach Apple sealing victory for Team USA and touched gold at a record-breaking time of 3:26.78.
“It’s hard to mess that up when you have two world-record holders (Dressel and Murphy) and the fastest American breaststroker ever in front of you. I had an easy job there!,” Apple said.
“It’s such an honour to represent the USA especially in relays and to come home with gold and a world record is the icing on top,” he added.
Murphy was equally ecstatic about their victory and applauded the Organising committee for hosting the Olympic Games.
“It’s a massive undertaking to host an Olympics, especially in a pandemic,” the 26-year-old swimmer said.
“Throughout the entire past two years everything we heard was ‘oh, it’s going to be really tough to have these Olympics happen’.
“We got through the swimming, we finished the meet and we were able to do every single event. That is really, really impressive on the part of Japan.”
Meanwhile, records also tumbled for the Team GB quartet – Luke Greenbank, Adam Peaty, James Guy and Duncan Scott – as they picked up silver, breaking a new European record at 3:27.51.
The Italian quartet – Thomas Ceccon, Nicolo Martinenghi, Federico Burdisso and Alessandro Miressi, claimed bronze with a time of 3:29.17.
According to olympics.com. Source of photo: internet
