2024 Paris Olympics Day 8 Finals: Fun Facts

After an exciting night of finals, we finally got to see another world record go down, with the United States swimming a 3:37.43 to take the title in the 4×100 mixed medley relay. We finally got to see Summer McIntosh answer the question of who would win the 200 IM, and in the 1500 freestyle, we saw Katie Ledecky earn her ninth Olympic gold medal. It was a historic night for many countries, especially in the men’s 100 butterfly, with Kristof Milak winning Hungary’s first-ever gold medal in the men’s 100 fly. Here are some fun facts from the four finals swam tonight. 

MEN’S 100 BUTTERFLY

• Kristof Milak and Tatjana Smith both earned a pair of medals in their events at this Olympics, each winning a gold in the 100 distance of their stroke and a silver in the 200 distance. This is the reverse of the Tokyo Games for both swimmers, when they each won the 200 distance in world record time and came in second in the 100 distance. 
• Josh Liendo and Ilya Kharun became the first pair of male swimmers from Canada to appear on a podium together, and the second pair of Canadian swimmers to win medals in the same event. Cheryl Gibson and Becky Smith won silver and bronze in the women’s 400 IM in 1976. 
• Kristof Milak earns Hungary’s first gold medal in the 100 butterfly. He had won a silver medal in Tokyo, and his fellow countryman Laszlo Cseh tied for silver with Michael Phelps and Chad le Clos in 2016. This medal continues the streak of Hungarian excellence in the event.
• Liendo and Kharun also made history for Canada in another way, winning the country’s first medal in the men’s 100 butterfly since Bruce Robertson in 1972.

WOMEN’S 200 IM

• Summer McIntosh won her third gold medal of the meet, joining Leon Marchand (200/400 IM, 200 breaststroke, 200 butterfly) and Mollie O’Callaghan (200 freestyle, 4×100 FR-R, 4×200 FR-R), who each have at least three golds from this games. 
• Between the three medalists, both Douglass and McKeown had some of the fastest splits for each stroke in the field, but McIntosh did not. Douglass was the fastest in butterfly, breaststroke, and freestyle, McKeown was fastest in backstroke, and although McIntosh was not the fastest in any of strokes, she was consistent amongst the four 50s. 
• McIntosh’s time of 2:06.56 broke Katinka Hosszu’s Olympic record of 2:06.58 from 2016.

WOMEN’S 800 FREESTYLE

• Katie Ledecky wins her fourth overall gold medal in the women’s 800 freestyle, solidifying her place as the best to ever do it. 
• Paige Madden’s bronze medal in the event is the first individual Olympic medal in her career. With her bronze medal and Ledecky’s gold, the United States featured two women on the same 800 freestyle podium for the first time since Brooke Bennett and Kaitlin Sandeno in Sydney 2000. 
• Ariarne Titmus of Australia broke the Oceanian record in her swim, going an 8:12.29, breaking her previous record of 8:13.59 from 2022.
• Paige Madden even split her first 400 and second 400, going a 4:06.50 in both to swim an 8:13.00. 

MIXED 4×100 MEDLEY RELAY

• The United States broke the second world record from the meet, swimming a 3:37.43 to win the event in world record time. 
• Each relay in the final swam using a male breaststroker and a female freestyler, with the fastest breaststroke split coming from China’s Qin Haiyang (57.82) and the fastest freestyle split coming from the United States’ Torri Huske (51.88). Huske now owns the fastest women’s split of the meet. 
• Other fastest splits came from Kaylee McKeown, leading off for Australia (57.90), Ryan Murphy (52.08), Gretchen Walsh swimming butterfly for America (55.18), and Josh Liendo swimming fly for Canada (50.08). 
• China and Australia defended their silver and bronze medals from the Tokyo games, both countries swimming faster than they did three years ago. 
• With this win for America, Nic Fink, Gretchen Walsh, Charlie Swanson, and Regan Smith all win the first Olympic gold medals of their careers.