Australia's Zac Stubblety-Cook won golden and claimed an Olympic grounds successful the last of the 200m breaststroke astatine the Tokyo Olympics connected Thursday.
After qualifying fastest for the final, Stubblety-Cook clocked 2:06.38. He bushed Arno Kamminga of The Netherlands (2:07.01) and Finland's Matti Mattsson (2:07.13) into the insignificant medals, having been sixth aft the archetypal thigh and 3rd astatine the last turn.
Stubblety-Cook is renowned for his almighty 2nd 100m successful the longer breaststroke lawsuit and helium mowed down his rivals successful astonishing fashion. He was astir 2 seconds faster than metallic medallist Kamminga implicit the last 50m.
Stubblety-Cook, a 22-year-old Queenslander, was attempting to emulate John Davies (Helsinki 1952) and Ian O'Brien (Tokyo 1964) arsenic Olympic champions for Australia successful the lawsuit - and helium succeeded, breaking a 57-year drought.
He won Australia's 5th swimming golden medal and 10th medal wide successful the excavation truthful acold astatine these Olympics. Five golden medals means that the Aussies are already level with their haul astatine Sydney 2000 and the Athens 2004 haul (seven golds) is good successful sight. Eight golds astatine Melbourne 1956 remains Australia's best.
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"Unbelievable, I'm mislaid for words," Stubblety-Cook said afterwards connected excavation deck.
"It's been a pugnacious 5 years and I'm mislaid for words to beryllium honest."
He was capable to laughter astir the heart-stopping mode of his win.
"Made it entertaining, right?" helium said.
"That's the mode I trained and that's the mode I've worked and the mode I contention each the time. At these Games, I'm not going to effort and alteration anything, I'm not going to effort and alteration my swimming; it's excessively precocious for that.
"I'm decidedly blessed that the process pulled [it] off."
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