By Simon Evans
TOKYO (Reuters) -Australia’s Ariarne Titmus won her second gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics after defeating American rival Katie Ledecky again to win the women’s 200m freestyle on Wednesday while Hungary’s Kristof Milak powered to men’s 200m butterfly gold.
Titmus won in a time of 1:53.50 from Hong Kong’s Siobhan Haughey with Canada’s Penny Oleksiak third.
Five-times Olympic champion Ledecky, the defending gold medallist, finished a disappointing fifth, 1.71 behind Titmus.
“I’m bloody exhausted,” said Titmus. “That was a tough race. I knew Siobhan would be hard to beat. I could tell from the way she swam (in her heat) yesterday it would be tough to beat her,”
Once again the 20-year-old Titmus, dubbed ‘The Terminator’, delivered a blistering final lap — she had been in third place at the 150m turn with Haughey in the lead.
Titmus had beaten Ledecky to gold in the 400m freestyle on Monday and she becomes the first Australian woman to complete the 200-400 Olympic double since Shane Gould at the 1972 Munich Games.
Ledecky is back in the pool later on Wednesday when she competes in the first edition of the women’s 1,500m freestyle.
Titmus and Ledecky are expected to face each other in the 800m freestyle on Saturday in which the American is heavily favoured, and they will also be on opposite sides in the 4x200m relay.
Milak, the world record holder in the 200m fly, lived up to his billing as the heavy favourite and won by 2.48 from Japan’s Tomoru Honda with Italy’s Federico Burdisso taking bronze.
The Hungarian’s time of 1:51.25 was an Olympic record, surpassing Michael Phelps’ mark from an event he once dominated.
Phelps had set the previous Olympic record of 1:52.03 in Beijing. Milak’s world record of 1:50.73 came at the world championships in Gwangju in 2019.
His time might have been even faster if not for a mishap with his swimming trunks.
Showing reporters a ripped pair of trunks, he said: “They split 10 minutes before I entered the pool and in that moment I knew the world record was gone.
“I lost my focus and knew I couldn’t do it … but I am happy with the gold medal.”
(Reporting by Simon Evans, Additional reporting by Martin Petty, Aaron Sheldrick and Farah Master in Hong Kong and Alan Baldwin in London; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
