Australian swimmer Kyle Chalmers has taken the silver medal in the 100-metres freestyle, agonisingly falling a finger-nail short of defending his Olympic title.
Chalmers won the silver medal in Thursday’s final at the Tokyo Games, following on from his gold medal in the event at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
The South Australian was 0.06 seconds behind American Caleb Dressel, who won in 47.02 seconds, with Russia’s Kliment Kolisnikov (47.44) third.
Chalmers (47.08) unleashed his renowned late surge, coming from third at the turn to draw level with Dressel.
But in a desperate lunge, the American rallied to touch out the South Australian.
“I did everything in my absolute power to win,” Chalmers told the Seven Network.
“I executed the race well … I left absolutely everything in the pool.”
The Adelaide-based flyer was seeking to become the first Australian to claim double gold in the highly-anticipated event.
Jon Henricks (1956), John Devitt (1960) and Michael Wenden (1968) are Australia’s other 100m freestyle Olympic champions.
Only four swimmers in Olympic history have won back-to-back 100m freestyle titles.
AAP
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