US swimmer Bobby Finke on Thursday won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics men’s 800-meter freestyle event. The 21-year-old from Tampa, Florida came from behind in the last lap to beat Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri. His victory was the first for an American man in an Olympic distance race since 1984. 

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Swimmers Bobby Finke and Caeleb Dressel (100-meter freestyle) made sure Team USA’s swimming day started with two gold medals as the two aced their respective events. Dressel claimed the first individual Olympic gold medal of his career by holding off defending Olympic champion Kyle Chalmers (Australia). He won with an Olympic record of 47.02 seconds. The first three gold medals of Dressel’s career were all in the relays.

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Chalmers, who won the silver medal, fell short by a mere six hundredths of a second. ROC’s Kliment Kolesenikov claimed the bronze medal.

Finke is a four-time all-American at the University of Florida. Tokyo 2020 is his maiden Olympic Games. His winning time was 7 minutes and 41.87 seconds. Italy’s Paltrinieri fell short of just 0.24 seconds. Ukraine’s Mykhailo Romachuk, at 7:42.33, came third and Germany’s Florian Wellbrock fourth.

The race was initially led by Wellbrock, who was followed by Paltrinieri. Finke lurking back in fourth. However, the American sped up at the end of the race, to swim past the three swimmers ahead. 

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“I thought I executed my race plan perfectly. I couldn’t change anything. That’s how I felt in that moment. 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?” Dressels said after winning his maiden Olympic individual medal.

Meanwhile, men’s 200 meters breaststroke saw Australia’s Izaac Stubblety-Cook beat the Netherlands’ Arno Kamminga to win a gold medal in an Olympic record of 2 minutes and 6.38 seconds. China’s Zhang Yufei aced the women’s 200-meter butterfly. Zhang registered an Olympic record time of 2 minutes and 3.86 seconds.