Golden boy Le Clos finishes with seven-medal haul
IT WAS noted this week by Rebecca Adlington, the former Olympic champion from England turned TV analyst, that Chad le Clos was the stand-out swimmer at the 20th Commonwealth Games. He was “having fun”, she said, and wasn’t even properly shaven.
He had a bit more fun last night, grabbing his sixth and seventh medals to become the winner of the most medals at this year’s Games.
The two bronze medals he picked up last night, by scraping to third in the 200m medley and from the 4x100m medley relay, took his haul to two gold, one silver and four bronze.
Adlington’s comment was a way of suggesting Le Clos was in a league of his own over the six days of the swimming programme. He has progressed from the young man who shocked the world in London by beating Michael Phelps in the 200m butterfly to being the best in the world today.
Ian Thorpe, the Australian legend, has described Le Clos as this and the Durbanite is living up to the status.
Before these Games, Le Clos targeted seven medals. This would equal the number – six gold and a silver – that Thorpe took home from the Manchester Games in 2002.
Le Clos’s original plan was to try to win nine medals, but he reconsidered and pulled out of the 400m individual medley and 200m backstroke.
The seven he kept were the 50m, 100m and 200m butterfly, 200m individual medley, 4x100m freestyle, 4x200m freestyle relay and 4x100m medley relay.
He cruised to a win in the 200m butterfly, controlling the race until the final 50m. Down the final straight he looked left and right about a dozen times to see how his opponents were doing. It was like Usain Bolt showboating in the final few metres of the 100m sprint.
On Monday, after he had won his fifth medal in the 100m butterfly with a Games record of 51.29 seconds, he said he was feeling “a bit tired” and was also “sweating a bit”. He was thinking ahead of the Commonwealth Games to the next few years and a possible rivalry with Phelps, who has come out of retirement.
Was he throwing down the gauntlet for Phelps? “I was, ja,” smiled Le Clos. “It was the last thing I thought about in the blocks. I just thought, ‘What would Phelps think’?”
The Games have been “fun” for Le Clos. He says he will be focused when he attempts to break Phelps’s 200m butterfly record, perhaps next year.