Caeleb Dressel has earned his fifth swimming gold medal of the Tokyo Olympics as part of Team USA's winning 4x100m medley relay squad, putting him in elite company.
Earlier in the day, the 24-year-old Dressel cruised to a relatively easy victory in the 50-meter freestyle, touching in an Olympic record of 21.07 seconds.
With his fifth victory, Dressel joins Americans Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz and Matt Biondi, as well as East Germany’s Kristin Otto, as the only swimmers to win as many as five golds at a single Olympics. Phelps did it three times.
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Dressel won his first gold medals in the Rio Olympics in 2016, in the 4x100 meter freestyle relay and the 4x100m medley relay.
In Tokyo, he won gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay, the 100m freestyle, the 100m butterfly and the 50m freestyle, before being part of the relay team that finished off the swimming competition in Tokyo.
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“I wasn’t worried about anything,” Dressel said after winning his first individual gold. “During the race there’s only so much you can do. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen. I stuck to my race plan so if it got me first, OK, if it got me second, OK.”
