Live Swimming Results: Caeleb Dressel Wins Gold, Splits, and Updates – The New York Times

“I thought I executed my race plan perfectly,” he said. “I couldn’t change anything. That’s how I felt in that moment.”

Dressel and Chalmers are rivals, and they swam two lanes apart.

“I could actually see him in my peripherals, I knew he was right there,” Dressel said. “I couldn’t see him, but you can see disturbances in the water. I knew — who else would it be besides Kyle?”

Dressel exploded out of the blocks — the deciding six-hundredths of a second faster than Chalmers — and was ahead from the start. Kliment Kolesnikov earned bronze, 0.42 seconds off of Dressel’s pace.

The 100 free is the classic event, one that every swimmer swims as a child before splintering off to various specialties. This version of the men’s 100 free came spiced with a rivalry that has been building since the 2016 Rio Games, when Chalmers, then 18, won gold and Dressel finished sixth, just shy of his 20th birthday.

But Dressel has won a pair of world championships in the event since, and the Tokyo Games felt like a true splashdown to broader fame.

Now 24, Dressel led the United States to a gold medal in the 4×100 free relay this week in Tokyo, over Italy and Australia. His gold medal in the glamour event of the 100 could be a type of coronation for Dressel, who has two other events yet to swim, the 50-meter freestyle and the 100-meter butterfly.

Dressel said he had hoped for an even faster time, but recognized that the Olympics are not just about the clock.

“The goal here for everybody is to get your hands on the wall first,” he said. “So I had no complaints.”

Chupkov won the bronze medal in Rio at 19 years old, and came to Tokyo five years later with a new set of major titles under his belt. But he struggled in the semifinals and his seventh-place time landed him in an outside lane. He finished fourth in the final.

The race was expected to be a wide-open slog, with Mykhailo Romanchuk of Ukraine a slight favorite.

Paltrinieri arrived with one of the 10 best times in history, but he had struggled in Tokyo and was relegated to an outside lane for the final. He jumped out to the early lead, and held it through 14 of the race’s 16 laps.

The pack pulled closer with each turn, and Finke surged in the final 50 meters, swimming the last leg in 26.39 seconds, 1.65 seconds faster than Paltrinieri.

Finke finished in 7 minutes 41.87 seconds, a quarter-second ahead of Paltrinieri, who held on for silver. Romanchuk captured the bronze.

The men’s 800 meters was added to the Olympics for the first time this year, along with the women’s 1,500, which Katie Ledecky of the United States won.

She will look to add a ninth Olympic medal to her collection, but it will probably not be gold. Australia is a big favorite, looking for a world record behind Ariarne Titmus, who won the individual 200 free and edged out Ledecky for gold in the 400 free.

The relay will not be Ledecky’s last race of these Games. She is scheduled to compete in the 800 free qualifying heats on Thursday evening (Tokyo time), after a few hours of rest.

But he struggled in the semifinals, his seventh-place time landing him in an outside lane. Watch the bobbing head in Lane 1. But also watch for Zac Stubblety-Cook of Australia, the leader out of the semifinals, and James Wilby of Britain and Arno Kamminga of the Netherlands.

There will be lots more splashing and plenty of drama in the women’s 200 butterfly. Any combination of women, including two top Americans, could end up with gold or no medal at all. Hali Flickinger won silver at the 2019 world championships, and Regan Smith may push her in an event not considered her strongest. (That would be backstroke.)

That American duo will have to shoulder their way past Zhang Yufei of China and Boglarka Kapas of Hungary, who beat Flickinger in those 2019 worlds.

The center includes a 10-lane main pool, a training pool and a diving pool. For races, only the inside eight lanes are utilized. All the swimming, diving and artistic swimming events are held there. Next month, it will host the Paralympic swimming competitions.

What is the size of the pool?

The main pool is 50 meters (164 feet) long and 25 meters (82 feet) wide. And it is 3 meters deep, or about 9.8 feet. The main pool and the warm-up pool also have movable floors and walls and have adapting depth options.

How warm is the water?

The temperature is kept between 25 and 28 degrees Celsius, which is between 77 and 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Is there a lifeguard at the pool?

Yes, lifeguards keep close watch on the swimmers, who could require aid from injuries and cramps. They’re also on hand for other contests: Water polo games are very physical; artistic swimming has seen many concussions in the past; and divers are launching themselves from towering heights.

Why do air horns go off during the races?

Air horns are usually used to remind swimmers that they’re on their final lap.

But Dressel, who is from Green Cove Springs, Fla., eventually became laser-focused on swimming. By his mother’s telling, Dressel’s first “competition” came when he jumped in the pool during one of his siblings’ swim meets, raced his way to the other end and claimed, “I won a medal, I won a medal!”

It was the first unofficial accomplishment in his booming career: Dressel, who swam for the University of Florida, went on to sweep up 15 medals at world championships and set world and U.S. records.

At the 2019 FINA World Championship Games, Dressel broke his first long-course world record in the 100-meter butterfly, posting a time of 49.50 and shattering the previous record of 49.82 set by Michael Phelps.

Dressel made his Olympic debut at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, where he and his team won gold in the men’s 4×100 freestyle and in the 4×100 medley relays. At the Rio Games, Dressel placed sixth in the 100-meter freestyle.

He won his third Olympic gold with Team U.S.A. in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay at the Tokyo Games on Monday, but he has not yet won an individual Olympic gold.

Dressel, who has a tattoo of the Olympic rings on the inside of his right arm, hopes to change that in the 100-meter freestyle final, where he will face off against competitors from Australia, Italy, Hungary, Romania, South Korea, France and the Russian Olympic Committee.

“As soon as I get behind those blocks, I finally get to do what I was trained to do,” Dressel said in a U.S.A. Swimming video from 2016. “I finally get to be me.”

Swimming coverage begins at 9:30 p.m. on NBC.

The scheduled times of the medal events are:

• 9:30 p.m. Eastern time: Men’s 800-meter freestyle final

• 9:44 p.m.: Men’s 200 breaststroke final

• 10:28 p.m.: Women’s 200 butterfly final

• 10:37 p.m.: Men’s 100 free final

• 11:31 p.m.: Women’s 4×200 free relay final

NBC’s coverage can also be streamed on NBCOlympics.com and on its Peacock service.

On Wednesday morning, though, she finally got her chance in the inaugural women’s 1,500 and delivered her first gold of the Tokyo Games. Ledecky’s time of 15 minutes 37.34 seconds was more than four seconds faster than her American teammate Erica Sullivan (15:41.41), who won the silver, and more than five seconds ahead of the bronze medalist, Sarah Kohler of Germany (15:42.91).

Ledecky holds the world record in the 1,500 and had the top qualifying time on Monday. Her victory in the event — a grueling marathon that requires 30 trips the length of the pool — came a little more than an hour after Ledecky had finished fifth in the 200 freestyle final.

Ledecky has won three 1,500-meter world championships and has set world records six times, more than any other swimmer in the event, male or female. But in just competing at this distance in the Olympics, Ledecky was getting an opportunity denied to distance-swimming greats like Janet Evans, Debbie Meyer, Shane Gould and Jennifer Turrall.

Until 1968, the longest Olympic event in women’s swimming was 400 meters. Meyer won the first 800-meter Olympic race for women at the Mexico City Games that year, as well as the 200 and 400 freestyle.

She held the world record in both the 800 and the 1,500 back then, and she told The Times in 2014 that she questioned why the longer race was not available at the Olympics. Meyer said she had been told that there weren’t enough countries with women competing in the 1,500.

“It really was all about the thinking then,” she said, “which was, women were the weaker sex and because men were stronger people, they could last the distance.”

Over the years, other discrepancies in swimming have been resolved. From 1984 to 1996, for example, the men had three relays and the women two. At the Atlanta Games, the women gained parity, with a 4×200-meter freestyle relay.

But FINA, the international governing body for aquatics, had long resisted allowing women to compete in the 1,500 at the Summer Games, despite efforts in every sport to make the Olympic experience equal for women and men.

In 2015, Julio Maglione, the FINA president, said he doubted that the 1,500 could be added to the Olympic program, which was already packed with races at multiple distances for every stroke.

Yet now, not only have women gained the 1,500, but male distance swimmers also have an 800 on their schedule for the first time since 1904. A mixed medley relay has been added, with two men and two women on each team.

The longest swim in Tokyo, however, will not take place in the pool. The 10-kilometer open-water event was added to the Olympics in 2008, with races for men and women.