By Rohith Nair
PARIS (Reuters) – America claimed their 3,000th Olympic medal when Regan Smith and Katharine Berkoff received silver and bronze within the girls’s 100m backstroke on Tuesday, however they’ve struggled to succeed in the highest step of the swimming podium at La Protection Area.
Whereas the U.S. have now received 3,000 medals in Summer time and Winter Olympics mixed, no different nation has even half that tally.
However in Paris, the Individuals are nonetheless nicely behind within the gold medal charts, with 5 international locations forward of them – for now.
Australia have received 4 golds within the pool and though the Individuals have received a whopping 15 medals general, they’ve claimed solely two golds.
The American males’s 4x200m freestyle relay workforce completed second behind Britain, whereas Bobby Finke was second within the males’s 800m freestyle last on Tuesday night time.
“I feel we’re all the time capturing for gold, that is the American commonplace,” relay swimmer Drew Kibler mentioned.
“It’s a actually particular factor to be on that podium and it was actually robust a number of years in the past lacking that podium. So it is a step ahead, however we’re all the time capturing for gold.”
FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS
Precisely 32 years in the past to the day, David Berkoff received the boys’s 100 metres backstroke on the Barcelona Video games, and his daughter Katharine adopted in her father’s footsteps within the girls’s occasion in Paris.
Her father received 4 Olympic medals in all, and when 23-year-old Berkoff received her first, it was additionally the 600th medal the U.S. had received in swimming.
“I have been dreaming of being on the Olympics for my entire life. I undoubtedly have extra objectives and I am not fairly happy but,” Berkoff informed reporters.
When requested if her father had given her any recommendation, she mentioned: “He is been very supportive, simply attempting to remind me to remain in my very own lane, keep in mind why I am doing what I am doing and simply do it for myself and nobody else.
“I am so grateful they get to be right here to observe… simply grateful for my dad and mom’ assist alongside the way in which.”
Australia’s Kaylee McKeown defended her backstroke crown whereas Individuals Smith and Berkoff accomplished the rostrum.
“I feel different individuals’s performances are utterly out of my management and Kaylee is one in every of one. She is a fully unimaginable racer and he or she is aware of what to do when it issues,” mentioned Smith after claiming her fourth Olympic medal.
“I am actually happy with myself… I stayed in my very own lane, I executed my race plan and I left all of it within the pool.”