The USA men’s team cleared up all doubts that have been recently raised about their superiority and won the gold medal in 4×100 medley relay at the Tokyo Olympics, as they set a new world record at 3:26.78.
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The Americans have been dominating the 4×100 since it was included in the Olympics back in 1960 in Rome, except for the tournament that took place in Moscow in 1980 and was boycotted by the country.
Yet, their hegemony has been questioned in the last few years due to their struggles in recent World Championships, having lost to Great Britain in the last edition in 2019.
The US men’s team have won just 11 gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics, where they failed to make it to the podium for the first time in their Olympic history in 4×200 relay and in 4×100 freestyle relay.
However, the Americans dominated this time in 4×100 medley relay, with Ryan Murphy, Michael Andrew, Caeleb Dressel and Zach Apple deservedly winning the gold and breaking the world record set by the 2009 US team.
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.”

Five Tokyo 2020 gold medals for Dressel:
After winning podium in the 50m freestyle event and in the 4×100 medley relay, Dressel now has five gold medals under his belt.
“I tried to convince myself that worlds was the same, and it is the same competition; but it is a lot different here. I’m aware of that now, and I’ll stop lying to myself – it means something different to prepare for something that happens every four years to prepare for something that happens over 40 seconds and 20-something seconds,” the US star said.
“You have to be so perfect in that moment, especially as we had to have an extra year – we’ve had a five-year build-up and to be perfect. There is so much pressure in that one moment that your whole life boils down to a moment that takes 20 or 40 seconds. How crazy is that?
And it also capped a remarkable Games for Dressel who won his fifth gold medal. He won gold in the 50-meter freestyle earlier in the day.
“I’m proud of myself,” Dressel said. “I feel like I reached what my potential was here at these Games.”
“I had confidence in Caeleb that he was going to give me a lead,” Apple said. “I didn’t know how fast he was going, but I knew he was giving his best effort and that’s what I was going do as well. And it worked out.”

Great Britain took the silver, finishing .73 behind the Americans. Italy took bronze.
“We sat down with our four guys and all we wanted them to do was swim at their level, and we knew that would produce a performance that would have a very good potential of breaking the world record,” Durden said. “And if we went faster than anyone else has ever gone, we were going to feel good about that.”

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