dpa
Paris
The United States team had a busy time in the final day of pool swimming at the Paris Games on Saturday as they set two world records, but had their historic men’s 4x100-metre medley relay ended by China.
American Bobby Finke claimed the men’s 1,500m freestyle record, before the women’s team clocked a new best time in the 4x100m medley relay.
But their impressive run in the men’s 4x100m medley came to an end.
The US had won all of the races they competed in since the event was introduced to the Olympics programme in 1960.
The only exception had been the 1980 Games in Moscow, which the US boycotted in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Australia, competing under the Olympic Flag in partial support to the boycott, were the winners that year.
In Paris, however, China made history. Chinese anchor Pan Zhanle, the 100m freestyle gold winner and record holder, took the lead from France’s Florent Manadou and completed the race in 3 minutes 27.46 seconds.
"This is magic for me. We make a good team and we got a good result,” Pan said.
France were leading at the final exchange, but had to settle for bronze after Hunter Armstrong also passed Manadou to help the US to silver.
Poster boy Marchand got the bronze after four individual golds, in the 200m and 400m medley, 200m breaststroke and 200m butterfly.
The Tokyo 2020 1,500m freestyle winner Finke clocked a world record 14:30.67 minutes to claim his second consecutive gold in the event in style.
He bettered the previous record of 14:31.02 minutes set by China’s Sun Yang at London 2012. In Paris, he had already claimed 800m freestyle silver.
"I kind of saw I had a pretty decent lead at like the 300 (metre mark). I knew I kind of just had to keep going, and hopefully try and make the guys hurt a little bit trying to catch up to me,” Finke said.
"But they started catching up to me. I was getting a little worried, but I knew I just had to keep pushing. As long as I can keep a little bit of the distance, I knew I was in a good shape for the end of the race.”
It was a fantastic performance from Finke, who led throughout the entire race and had all split times below the previous record en route to the only individual swim gold for the American men’s team.
"I knew going into the race I was the last individual swimmer for the guys,” he said.
"As much as it sucks that we’re not dominating any more, I think it’s good for the sport, and it shows how far the sport has come.”
Gregorio Paltrinieri of Italy took silver, while 800m freestyle winner Daniel Wiffen claimed bronze for Ireland.
In the final pool event at the Paris Games, American quartet Regan Smith, Lilly King, Gretchen Walsh and Torri Huske, delighted the fans with a perfect farewell by clocking a world record 3:49.63 minutes to take Olympic gold in the women’s 4x100m medley relay at Paris Games.