There’s a reason the U.S. swim team sees Dressel as its ultimate firewall against the surging tide of parity coming from Australia and other rivals, why the Americans would choose 90 percent of Dressel’s best over 100 percent of someone else, why they chose him over faster, younger teammates — the ones who gave him that lead Saturday night — for the crucial closing leg.
When Dressel, 27, touched the wall more than a second ahead of the Australian to his right, the U.S. team had its first gold medal. Dressel and the three youngsters — Jack Alexy, 21, Chris Guiliano, 21, and Hunter Armstrong, 23 — finished in 3:09.28, ahead of the Australians (3:10.35) and the Italian bronze medalists (3:10.70).
“They made my job easier,” Dressel said.
For Dressel, the win is the continuation of one of the most remarkable runs in recent swimming history: he remains undefeated in Olympic finals. Eight starts, eight gold medals. While he is no longer the invincible he was in Tokyo, where he won five gold medals and cemented his status as the world’s best male swimmer, he remains an elite swimmer whose ability to put his hand on the wall is still world-class.
“The relays are a little more special, to be honest. It reminds me of my first gold medal,” Dressel said, recalling his two relay victories at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. “You never get tired of it. It’s really special to be on the podium with those guys.”
The crowd that filled La Défense Arena, a 30,000-seat indoor stadium that is home to the Racing 92 rugby team, cheered on the Americans with slightly less energy and volume than the French swimmers on the field. After two renditions of “Advance Australia Fair,” the Australian national anthem, the final medal ceremony of the evening was finally marked by the presentation of the medals to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” On the top step of the podium, Armstrong was in tears as the anthem was played.
“I’m going to give my all for these boys,” Armstrong, who swam the third leg, said of the emotions surrounding his 46.75-second time, the fastest of the four Americans. “I knew I had to give Caeleb everything I had, so I’m glad I was able to do my job.”
If Dressel’s presence at the end of that relay was a comfort to his three teammates, the presence of that relay at the end of an otherwise unfavorable race on opening night was a comfort to the entire team. While the victory avoided a meaningless gold medal, the Americans already trail their rivals from Australia in both the gold medal count (two to one) and the overall count (four to three).
Earlier Saturday night, Australian middle-distance star Ariarne Titmus turned a potential race-of-the-century showdown between American distance legend Katie Ledecky and Canadian teenager Summer McIntosh into a rout, touching the wall in 3:57.49, nearly a second faster than silver medallist McIntosh (3:58.37) and more than three seconds ahead of Ledecky (4:00.86). For Ledecky, the bronze was the first of her Olympic career, after seven golds and three silvers, and leaves her one medal shy of the three other medals won by a female swimmer in history.
You have to go back to 1988, when the United States won eight gold medals and 18 overall, to East Germany’s 11 and 28, to find the last time the American team failed to finish atop the medal table in swimming. But Australia, in particular, made up for lost time and beat the Americans to gold a year ago at the world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, a competition Dressel notably did not attend, having recently taken an eight-month break for mental health reasons.
When it comes to the women’s side of the sport, the Australians have already surpassed Team USA for global supremacy, based on results from the Tokyo Olympics as well as the 2023 world championships – both of which saw the Australians double the Americans’ gold medal tally.
And on Saturday, the women’s 4×100 freestyle relay of Mollie O’Callaghan, Shayna Jack, Emma McKeon and Meg Harris (3:28.92) beat the silver medal-winning American quartet of Kate Douglass, Gretchen Walsh, Torri Huske and Simone Manuel (3:30.20). Walsh and Huske, however, led the U.S. team to a gold and silver medal in the 100 butterfly on Sunday after finishing 1-2 in Saturday’s semifinals.
Like Dressel, Manuel, 27, has been absent from the international scene in recent years, having been forced to take an extended break due to overtraining syndrome. Like Dressel, she has poured an infinite amount of emotion and energy into trying to regain her form. And like Dressel, she viewed her supporting leg as a mission she thought she would never be able to take on again.
“It feels really good to be back here, honestly,” Manuel said. “I didn’t know if I could perform at this level again, and so just to be able to do this relay again since 2021, but in a happier and healthier place, it’s really special. So I’m really happy that I was able to get my first medal in Paris with these women.”
Like Dressel and Ledecky, Manuel represents a link to the program’s glory years. All three won gold in Rio in 2016, Michael Phelps’ final Olympics, when Americans could still be counted on to dominate the medal table (that year’s total was 16 golds and 33 overall, compared to second-place Australia’s three and 10) and the talent pool seemed endless.
For the Americans to get back to that stage, if it is even possible, it will take more than the efforts of their veterans. The remaining eight days of this encounter will show whether the younger group has what it takes to hold off Australia and the rest of the world for another generation.