Emma McKeon leaves Tokyo with Olympic record seven medals. Could Caeleb Dressel have won seven golds?

TOKYO >> Admittedly Caeleb Dressel has been kind of busy the last 10 days.

So it was partially—not totally—understandable when he was caught off guard by a question about another swimmer has done serious lifting around the Tokyo Aquatics Centre—Australia’s Emma McKeon and her pursuit of seven medals at these Olympic Games.

“Wow, I haven’t been counting,” Dressel said on the eve of the final day of Olympic swimming. “Wow, she’s on track for seven? That’s incredible.”

They were counting Sunday morning back in Wollongong, her hometown along the Grand Pacific Drive south of Sydney, and across the rest of the swimming obsessed nation as McKeon became the first woman to win seven medals in a single Olympic Games, winning the 50-meter freestyle with an Olympic record, and then returned just 38 minutes later to swim a leg in Australia’s Olympic record setting 4×100 medley relay.

There was plenty of wow factor surrounding Dressel’s performance at these Games as well. He started the morning by winning the 50 freestyle by the largest margin in history, clocking an Olympic record 21.07 seconds. He closed out the swimming competition by taking Team USA from third to first in the 4×100 medley relay with a blazing third leg to set up the American’s world record-shattering victory and Dressel’s fifth gold medal in Tokyo.

In between Bobby Finke, Dressel’s training partner in Gainesville, Florida, completed his sweep of the Olympic distance events, adding a 1,500 meter gold medal (14 minutes, 39.65 seconds) to his 800 title earlier in the Games.

“Our standard is gold,” Dressel said, “that’s what we are always shooting for every race.”

Emma Mckeon, of Australia, starts in the women’s 50-meter freestyle final at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Sunday, Aug. 1, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Dressel could hardly be blamed if he was thinking he could have left Tokyo with seven gold medals, one shy of Michael Phelps single Games record.

And no one would blame him for wondering how fast he covered the 50 freestyle Sunday if he had actually been pushed. Dressel completed his sweep of the 50 and 100 free titles by powering to a 21.07 clocking, finishing nearly a half-second (.48) ahead of runner-up Florent Manaudou of France. The mark shattered the Olympic record of 21.30 set by Brazil’s Cesar Cielo in 2008 and made it clear that Cielo’s 13-year-old world record (20.91) is on borrowed time.

Team USA’s 3:26.78 victory in the 4×100 medley broke the world record of 3:27.28 set by the U.S. at the 2009 World Championships in Rome, the so called “Plastic Games” because of a decision by FINA, the sport’s international governing body, to allow the use of high tech polyurethane suits, that have since been banned. Cielo’s 50 record was also set in the same era.

“Caeleb has all the potential to beat Michael Phelps’ (records) one day, who knows?” Brazil’s Bruno, the 50 free bronze medalist said.

Any chance of Dressel claiming a sixth and seventh gold were dashed in two of the most controversial moments of the Olympic swimming competition—Team USA’s disastrous fifth place finish in the 4×100 mixed relay and the U.S. coaching staff’s inexplicable decision to leave him off the 4×200 freestyle relay. Without Dressel, the U.S. failed to medal for the first time ever in an event it has won all but three times since 1936, including the previous four Olympics.

McKeon followed up Dressel’s lopsided 50 victory with a convincing win of her own, taking the women’s 50 in an Olympic record 23.81, well ahead of the 29.07 clocking by runner-up Sarah Sjoestroem, the event’s world record holder. And like Dressel, she returned to swim the butterfly leg on the Aussies’ come from behind Olympic record victory in the 4×100 medley relay. Australia’s 3:51.60 edged the U.S. by .13.

When the counting was done, McKeon had her Olympic seven medals—four gold, three silver—to add to the three relay medals (a gold and two silvers) won in Rio de Janeiro five years earlier.

Of the seven medals in Tokyo, her favorite was the 100 freestyle, her first individual gold.

““I’ve never won an Olympics or Worlds.” She said “That’s what the Olympics is all about, to be able to stand on top of that podium.