2008 – Phelps vs Cavic; 1988 – Biondi vs Nesty

With the world shutting down, we’re reaching into our archives and pulling some of our favorite stories from the SwimSwam print edition to share online. If you’d like to read more of this kind of story, you can subscribe to get a print (and digital) version of SwimSwam Magazine here. This story was originally published in the 2018 Summer edition of SwimSwam Magazine.

Story by Rachel Lutz

This year marks the anniversary of an incredible 100-meter butterfly race at the Olympics, where the gold and silver medals were decided by the slimmest margin in the sport of swimming.

Are you thinking of Michael Phelps beating Milorad Cavic at the Water Cube in Beijing in 2008? Try again.

Thirty years ago, another 100 butterfly was decided by 0.01 seconds. Let’s take a look back at both races.

Matt Biondi made his first Olympic appearance at 18, when he won a gold medal with the 4×100 freestyle relay at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. But he really rose to prominence four years later in Seoul.

The 6-foot-6 Biondi was the favorite to win in Seoul — the world’s best butterflier at the time, Pablo Morales, didn’t make the U.S. Olympic team.

Biondi entered the final with the second-fastest seed time. He swam in briefs and without a swim cap. He led the field the entire race, except the last stroke. Biondi made the costly split-second decision to kick into the wall, not realizing how far away he really was. He ended up coasting to the wall for about six feet.

In the time it took him to glide to the wall, Suriname’s Anthony Nesty completed a full stroke to touch one-hundredth of a second faster, in 53 seconds flat, to win the country’s first Olympic medal and become the first black swimmer to win Olympic gold.

Biondi later famously wondered, “What if I had grown my fingernails longer?”

Biondi ultimately took home seven medals from Seoul — five gold, one silver, one bronze — and capped his career with 11 total medals across three Olympics. Nesty, meanwhile, captured a bronze in the 100 butterfly four years later.

Twenty years later, the 100 butterfly was again decided by 0.01 seconds. But this time, it worked out in the U.S. swimmer’s favor.

Phelps had already won six gold medals in Beijing when he stepped up to the blocks before the final, wearing a cap and a tech suit.

The 100 butterfly was expected to be his toughest race, as he did not hold the world record at the time — Ian Crocker did. Phelps was seeded second behind Serbia’s Cavic, who had broken Phelps’s Olympic record in the heats.

Cavic led at the turn, and Phelps was seventh. But Phelps’s trademark underwaters and second-half speed carried him to the finish. Cavic finished the race fully extended into the wall while Phelps took a half stroke to get his hands on the touchpad first.

Phelps clocked 50.58 to Cavic’s 50.59.

In another twist, just 0.01 seconds separated Crocker from the bronze medal, won by Australia’s Andrew Lauterstein.

“When I chopped the last stroke, I really thought it cost me the race,” Phelps said at the time. “But it happened to be the exact opposite. If I had glided, I would have been way too long. I ended up making the right decision, trying to take a short, fast stroke to get my hand on the wall first.”

It was the seventh of an eventual eight historic gold medals for Phelps in Beijing.

Phelps and Cavic met again a year later at the 2009 World Championships in Rome, where Phelps won; his 49.82 world record still stands today.*

*Since the writing of this article, Caeleb Dressel has brought the world record down to 49.50.