NANTERRE, France (AP) — Torri Huske touched the wall and turned to teammate Gretchen Walsh knowing they each had won an Olympic medal. Both Americans quickly spun their heads around to see the scoreboard to find out who had captured gold.
Huske had her elusive Olympic title, by just .04 seconds over Walsh in the women’s 100-meter butterfly on Sunday night. She edged the world-record holder swimming to her right, coming from behind in a fantastic finish.
Walsh led at the 50-meter mark and was under her world-record pace, with Huske in third.
Huske caught Walsh, something she couldn’t do at the Olympic trials last month, touching the wall in 55.59 seconds, just ahead of Walsh’s 55.63.
“You never really know for sure and I first saw the light by the block and seeing that it was just very surreal, I didn’t even know how to process it,” Huske said. “It’s just very overwhelming when you’ve been dreaming of this moment for so long.”
Huske lifted her goggles from her eyes and covered her mouth with her left hand as Walsh reached over the lane line with a congratulatory pat on the cap.
Zhang Yufei won bronze, her second of the Games after her Chinese team finished third in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay Saturday. Zhang was among the 23 swimmers from China who tested positive for a banned heart medication ahead of the Tokyo Games three years ago but were allowed to compete.
This has been a long time coming for Huske, a Stanford swimmer who has been working on improving her final 50 meters following some disappointing results. She just missed a medal at the Tokyo Olympics, placing fourth with a 55.73.
It has been a great start for Huske in Paris. She earned a silver in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay Saturday. On Sunday, her final followed French star Leon Marchand’s commanding 400 individual medley victory, which ignited the home crowd at La Defense Arena.
“Honestly I don’t remember my race that much. My first 50 felt really good and then I’ve been working on my second 50 a lot, especially after last year,” Huske said. “I had kind of a weak finish and I kind of died in my race. And last Olympics, also, I lost it all in the last 50.”
In the medal ceremony, Huske pulled Walsh from the second step and the two 21-year-olds from Virginia stood together atop the podium as the national anthem played. They then grabbed an American flag and draped it around themselves for a victory lap around the pool.
A night earlier in the semifinals, Walsh set an Olympic record of 55.38, just shy of her 55.18 world record on June 14.
“It was an amazing race. I was definitely nervous before, I feel like there was a lot of pressure on me just having gotten the world record and the Olympic record last night, and I just wanted to try to execute the race as best as I could,” Walsh said. “It was definitely a fight to the finish and seeing the 1-2 up there though was amazing. I’m so proud of Torri, I’m proud of myself. That was what America needed and wanted. It was a really special moment that we shared out there on the podium.”
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