AssociAted Press

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — The United States’ KaKatie Ledecky came into the Rio Olym-pics facing enormous ex-pectations.

S o m e a t h l e t e s might’ve buckled under the pressure.

She seemed to thrive on it.

The 19-year-old from suburban Washington capped off one of the greatest performances in Olympic history with her fourth gold medal and second world record, shattering her own mark in the 800-meter freestyle Friday night.

“I just wanted to lay it all out there,” Ledecky said.

She certainly did that.And more.Ledecky joined Debbie

Meyer as the only female swimmers to sweep the three longest freestyle races. Meyers took the 200, 400 and 800 at Mex-ico City in 1968.

She also followed fel-low swimmers Amy Van Dyken and Missy Frank-lin as the only American women to win as many as four golds in a single Olympics.

“I hit all my goals right on the nose this week,” Ledecky said. “I’m just proud to be part of that history.”

Four years ago, she seemingly came out no-

where to capture gold as a 15-year-old at the London Games. Then, after her coach moved to the West Coast, Ledecky hooked up with Bruce Gemmell and never missed a beat.

She called it “a testa-ment to the vision that Bruce and I had three years ago when we set these goals, and we weren’t going to stop un-til we met them.”

As was the case in the 400 free, where she also broke her own world re-cord, Ledecky was mere-ly racing the clock as she powered away from the field to touch in 8 min-utes, 4.79 seconds, eclips-

ing the mark of 8:06.68 that she set at a grand prix meet in Texas back in January.

“The goal was 8:05 or better,” she said.

Naturally, she was bet-ter.

Then, Ledecky played the waiting game, hang-ing on the rope for a while to let the rest of the field finish.

Jazz Karlin final-ly touched in 8:16.17 to claim the silver, just ahead of Hungary’s Bo-glarka Kapas grabbing the bronze in 8:16.37.

Some 23 seconds af-ter Ledecky touched the wall, the last of the eight finalists chugged to the end of the grueling race.

Ledecky was barely breathing hard.

On the medal stand, though, the emotions swept over her.

She broke down in tears, relishing her ac-complishments and sure-ly thinking about all the work she put in to make it there.U.S. men’S baSketball

edgeS Serbia, 94-91The Cleveland Cava-

liers’ Kyrie Irving scored 15 points and the U.S. men’s basketball team survived its second straight strong challenge in the Rio Games, edging Serbia 94-91 on Friday.

The Americans won their 48th consecutive in-ternational tournament game, but it was any-thing but easy.

Serbia’s Bogdan Bog-danovic missed a 3-point-er from the left wing with 2 seconds left that would have tied it, and Kevin

Durant grabbed the re-bound to keep the Amer-icans unbeaten. They barely escaped against Australia on Wednesday.

Seeking their third straight gold medal, the Americans built an early 18-point lead but couldn’t put away the Serbians, who lost by 29 to the U.S. in the 2014 Basketball World Cup final.

D e A n d r e J o r d a n scored 13 and Carmelo Anthony 12 for the U.S., which will close pool play on Sunday against France.

Nikola Jokic scored 25 and Miroslav Raduljica 18 before fouling out for Serbia.35-year-old ervin winS

gold in “SplaSh and daSh”

Sixteen years after winning his first indi-vidual gold medal at the Olympics, Anthony Er-vin picked up his second with a furious dash from one end of the pool to the other.

Completing a re -markable journey in the blink of an eye, the old-est member of the U.S. swimming team touched first in the 50-meter free-style, edging the defend-ing Olympic champion, Florent Manaudou of France, by a mere hun-dredth of a second.

Another American, Na-than Adrian, took the bronze.

The 35-year-old Ervin won his first gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, tying teammate Gary Hall Jr. for the top spot. Then, Ervin walked away from swimming, skipping

the next two Olympics while he embarked on a journey to find his pur-pose in life.

Turns out, it was swimming all along. He returned to make the American team in 2012, but failed to win a medal in London. Now, improb-ably, he’s back on the top of the podium again.dirado UpSetS hoSSzU

to win gold Maya DiRado of the

United States won the women’s 200-meter back-stroke and denied Hun-gary’s Katinka Hosszu’s bid to become a four-time gold medalist at the Rio Olympics.

Hosszu got off to a blis-tering start and led al-most the entire race. But DiRado rallied furious-ly on the final lap and got Hosszu at the touch to win in 2 minutes, 5.99 seconds.

Hosszu settles for sil-ver in 2:06.05, while Cana-da’s Hilary Caldwell took the bronze in 2:07.54.

DiRado couldn’t be-lieve what she had done in her one and only Olym-pics. She put her hands on her cap in disbelief when she saw he name

on top of the scoreboard.U.S. women’S Soccer

oUSted by SwedenTaunted by local fans

since the Olympics began and stinging from a sur-prising loss, Hope Solo called Sweden a “bunch of cowards.”

The U.S. goalkeeper criticized the Swedes for the way they played Fri-day in beating the Amer-icans in a penalty shoot-out — a result that means the world’s top-ranked team will miss out on a medal in women’s soccer for the first time.

“I thought we played a courageous game,” Solo said. “I also think we played a bunch of cow-ards. The best team did not win today. I strongly and firmly believe that.”

The Swedes beat the U.S. 4-3 on penalties fol-lowing a 1-1 draw in the quarterfinals. They will next face either Austra-lia or host Brazil.

“It’s OK to be a coward if you win,” responded Sweden coach Pia Sund-hage, the same woman who coached the United States to back-to-back Olympic gold medals in 2008 and 2012.

WWW.recordPUB.coM Record-Courier Saturday, August 13, 2016 B5

RIO OLYMPICSXXXI summer games

AssociAted Pressthe United States’ katie ledecky starts her gold medal-winning swim in the women’s 800-meter freestyle at the 2016 Summer olympics on Friday night in rio de Janeiro, brazil.

The silver-medal fin-ish gave him 27 career medals.

The 31-year-old Phelps still has a chance to leave Rio with 23 golds in his career.

If he does, he will do it with his teammates, swimming in the butter-fly leg of the 400 medley relay on the final night of swimming Saturday.

On Friday in the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps wound up in a three-way tie for silver along with two longtime rivals, Chad le Clos of South Africa and Lasz-lo Cseh of Hungary. They all touched in 51.14 — a half-body length behind Schooling’s winning time of 50.39.

“A three-way tie is pret-

ty wild,” Phelps said. “Joe is tough. Hats off to him, he swam a great race. It’s kind of special and a de-cent way to finish my last individual race.”

Phelps quickly swam over to congratulate Schooling, who seemed stunned by what he had done.

“It hasn’t really sunk in yet,” Schooling said. “I’m sorry if I don’t seem like I’m full of emotions right now. I don’t know what to believe, like, whether I actually did it or I’m still preparing for my race.”

Phelps, he added, is “a guy that will go down in our history books as the greatest of all time of any sport. I’m just hon-ored and glad to have that moment and that privilege to race along-side Michael and Chad and all those guys.”

phelpsfroM B1

Kent State’S thomaS placeS 25th in women’S Shot put for Jamaica; barneS to run monday

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — In the first day of track and field competition from Olympic Sta-dium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Kent State track and field’s Dan-niel Thomas came away with a 25th-place finish in the women’s shot put.

A representative of Jamaica, Thomas recorded a best throw of 55 feet, 9 inches on her final at-tempt to top nearly a third of the field, but did not qualify for the finals.

Valerie Adams of New Zealand was the top overall qualifier, finishing with a heave of 64-9.25.

After redshirting this past season, Thomas will return to Kent State this fall and continue her illustrious career as a member of the Gold-en Flashes’ track and field team.

Meanwhile, William Barnes will continue Kent State’s run in the 2016 Summer Olympics as he competes in the first round of the men’s 110-me-ter hurdles on Monday at 7:40 p.m.

— r-C staff report

thomas

OLYmPICs TV sCHeDuLe

6:30 a.m.golF — Men’s GoLf — third round (LiVe)

8 a.m.nbcSn — Women’s fencing (LiVe); track & field - Qualifying rounds (LiVe); Men’s soccer - Quarterfinal, Portugal vs. Ger-many (L iVe); Men’s shoot ing - skeet Gold Medal final (L iVe) ; Men’s soc-cer - Quarterfinal, Nigeria vs. denmark (LiVe); Beach Volleyball - round of 16, solberg/G. oliveira Jr. (Brazil) vs. Lia-min/Barsouk (russia); Men’s Basketball - spain vs. Lithuania (LiVe); Men’s Weight-lifting - 94kg Gold Medal final; cycling - track finals; Men’s soccer - Brazil vs. colombia (LiVe); Men’s Boxing; Men’s shooting - Pistol Gold Medal final

9 a.m.mSnbc — Women’s Water Polo (LiVe); Women’s fencing (LiVe); cycling - track; Women’s table tennis - team Quarter-final; Men’s Badminton - shu (U.s.) vs. Guerrero (cuba); Men’s Volleyball - Po-land vs. russia (LiVe); Women’s fenc-ing - team sabre Bronze and Gold Med-al (LiVe); sailing

10 a.m.nbc — track & field - Qualifying rounds (LiVe): Men’s discus - Gold Medal final; rowing - Gold Medal finals (LiVe); Wom-en’s Water Polo - U.s. vs. Hungary (LiVe); Beach Volleyball - round of 16, Ludwig/Walkenhorst (Germany) vs. forrer-Vergé-dépré (switzerland) (LiVe); rowing - Gold Medal finals; Men’s trampoline - Gold

Medal final (LiVe); Men’s Volleyball - U.s. vs. france (LiVe)USa — Beach Vol leybal l - round of 16: Men, cerutti/schmidt (Brazil) vs. G. collado/H. Allepuz (spain) and Women, Broder/Valjas (canada) vs. Bansley/Pavan (canada) (LiVe); Men’s Handball; Men’s Basketball - Argentina vs. Brazil (LiVe)

11 a.m.bravo — tennis (LiVe) - Men’s sin-gles Bronze Medal , Women’s singles Bronze and Gold Medals, Women’s dou-bles Bronze and Gold Medals, Mixed dou-bles Bronze MedaltelemUndo — Men’s Basketball - Ar-gentina vs. Brazil; Men’s Volleyball - can-ada vs. Mexico

5 p.m.cnbc — Women’s field Hockey - U.s. vs. Great Britain (LiVe); Men’s soccer - Quar-terfinal, south Korea vs. Honduras (LiVe)nbc UniverSo — Boxing - elimination Matches; Men’s soccer - south Korea vs. Honduras (LiVe); Men’s Volleyball - can-ada vs. Mexico; Men’s soccer - Brazil vs. colombia (LiVe)

8 p.m.nbc — track & field (LiVe) - Gold Med-al events : Men’s Long Jump & 10k, Women ’s 100m semi f i na l s and f i -na l , Hepta th lon ; swimming (L iVe ) - Gold Medal events: Men’s 1500m free-style & 4x100m Medley relays, Women’s 50m freestyle & 4x100m Medley re-lays; Women’s diving; Beach Volleyball - Men’s Beach Volleyball - round of 16, dalhausser/Lucena (U.s.) vs. Huber/seidl (Austria) (LiVe)12:30 a.m. (sunday)nbc — track & field - semifinals

ledecky breaks world record in 800 free to win fourth gold; U.s. men’s basketball survives scare from serbia

AssociAted Pressthe United States’ michael phelps checks the clock at the end of the men’s 100-meter butterfly Friday in rio de Janeiro.