Caeleb Dressel, the American swimmer, won his first Olympic gold medal for an individual race on Thursday, setting an Olympic record of 47.02 seconds in the 100-meter freestyle and beating out Kyle Chalmers of Australia by six-hundredths of a second.
As the announcer blared “new Olympic record,” Dressel turned and looked at the time and, beaming, climbed up on the lane rope. He hoisted both arms in jubilation and hung there for a moment, smiling, a long pause on top that made you wonder if somebody was going to tell him it was time to get out of the pool.
“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.”
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