Olympian and Bolles graduate Ryan Murphy now has three Olympic gold medals around his neck with the completion of the men’s 4x100 meter medley relay and the men’s 100 meter and 200 meter backstroke.
The swimmer began his gold rush with a 100 meter backstroke, during which he swam an Olympic record time of 51.97 seconds, beating out China’s Xu Jiayu, who won silver, and U.S. teammate David Plummer with bronze. He continued later in the week with the 200m backstroke, when he finished with a time of 1:53.62, besting Australia’s Mitch Larkin and Russia’s Evgeny Rylov.
Murphy’s most impressive night came Saturday, however, when he swam in the 4x100m medley relay race. The 21-year-old set his first world record with a time of 51.85 in the opening 100-meter backstroke, beating out the previous world record set by Aaron Peirsol in 2009 by nine-tenths of a second.
Fellow Bolles alumni and U.S. teammate Caeleb Dressel, and Joseph Schooling – who represented Singapore – also won gold: Dressel claimed two gold medals with his performance in the men’s 4x100m medley relay as well as the men’s 4x100m free relay, the latter of which he swam a time of 48.10. Dressel’s time in the free relay was the second fastest overall. Schooling captured the gold medal over Michael Phelps in the 100m butterfly in an Olympic record time, claiming the first gold medal for Singapore.
