Phelpswins 200m butterfly for 20th gold

Michael Phelps seized the 20th Olympic gold medal of a swimming career that keeps on giving with a 200 metres butterfly triumph on Tuesday (August 9) that avenged his stinging 2012 defeat to South African Chad Le Clos.

Phelps, who would have had four successive wins in the event but for that London race, has now amassed a record-extending 25 Olympic medals having one another later on Tuesday in the 4×200 freestyle relay.

With all eyes on the rematch in Rio, with Phelps in lane five and Le Clos next to him, Japan’s Masato Sakai and Hungary’s Tamas Kenderesi crashed the party to collect silver and bronze.

Defending champion Le Clos, whose run-up to the Games was overshadowed by the devastating news that both of his parents had been diagnosed with cancer, finished an agonising fourth.

Phelps touched the wall in one minute, 53.36 seconds, slower than his 2012 silver medal performance, with Sakai finishing in 1:53.40.

Le Clos, who clocked 1:52.96 for gold in 2012, could only manage a 1:54.06.

South Korean fencer Park Sang-young came from behind in the final seconds to snatch gold from a man twice his age, upsetting 41-year-old Hungarian Geza Imre to become the youngest Olympic epee champion in over a century.

The silver finish for Imre, who took bronze in 1996 before Park was a year old, made the Hungarian the oldest Olympic fencer to take an individual medal since 1952.

He came within a touch of winning it all, at 14-10, before the Korean scored five straight times to win his country’s first Olympic gold in epee.

Park’s top finishes to date had been two grand prix wins in 2014, and he was ranked 21st heading into the fencing competition at the Rio Games.

Top-ranked Gauthier Grumier lost to Imre in the semi-final, but beat Switzerland’s Benjamin Steffen for bronze, securing a French medal after the country’s fencers left the London Games empty-handed for the first time since 1960.

Olympic swimming men’s 200m butterfly final result.