CAELEB DRESSEL of the United States made himself the most successful swimmer in Tokyo, who pocketed five golds from the six events he featured in as the swimming competitions concluded in Tokyo yesterday.

In the first race in the morning, Dressel won his fourth gold at the Tokyo Olympics, triumphing in the men’s 50m freestyle.

The reigning world champion set an Olympic record time of 21.07 seconds, 0.48 seconds before Florent Manaudou of France. Bruno Fratus of Brazil took a bronze in 21.57 seconds.

“Winning bronze releases a lot of pressure that was on my back. For the past few weeks I’ve been in my own bubble. I’ve been off social media, so to win the bronze medal is great,” said Fratus.

The 24-year-old Dressel has had three golds in hand prior to yesterday’s final, from 100m freestyle, butterfly and 4x100m freestyle relay.

An hour later, Dressel helped the United States break its own world record to win the last swimming gold in Tokyo from the men’s 4x100m medley relay.

“I’m proud of myself, I think I reached what my potential was here at these Games. It was just really fun racing. I’ll give myself a pat on the back and then I’ll just put it away and move forward. I’m going to take a break here,” said Dressel.

Finishing in 3 minutes and 26.78 seconds, the American swimmers sliced 0.5 seconds off their previous mark of 3:27.28 set in 2009. Britain won the silver in 3:27.51, while Italy bagged the bronze with the time of 3:29.17.

Dressel became one of three American male swimmers to win at least three individual golds at a single Olympics. The other two: Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps.

Dressel also became the first swimmer in history to win gold in the 50m freestyle, the 100m free and the 100m butterfly at the same Olympics.

His five-gold haul also made him the fifth American in history to win that many in a single Olympics in the past 50 years. Spitz, Phelps, Eric Heiden and Matt Biondi are the other four.

(SD-Xinhua)