{"id":108526,"date":"2021-07-30T06:55:04","date_gmt":"2021-07-30T06:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=108526"},"modified":"2021-07-30T07:57:24","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T07:57:24","slug":"swimming-villains-startling-response-to-silver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=108526","title":{"rendered":"Swimming villain's startling response to silver"},"content":{"rendered":"

US swim star Lilly King had a fair bit to say in the lead-up to the Tokyo Games<\/a>, and she's spiced things up again after failing to defend her Olympic title.<\/p>\n

King won silver in today's 200m breaststroke final with a strong swim, and it took the first individual world record in the pool in Tokyo from South Africa's Tatjana Schoenmaker to pip the American.<\/p>\n

OLYMPICS BLOG: LATEST UPDATES, NEWS<\/strong><\/em><\/a> |<\/strong><\/em> TOKYO GAMES EVENT CENTRE: SCHEDULE, RESULTS, MEDAL TALLY<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

King has copped a fair bit of flak for a cocky pre-Games prediction, which even before today had well and truly blown up in her face<\/a>.<\/p>\n

"I think the (US) women, if we have the meet we can have, can win every single individual gold," she said.<\/p>\n

"That would be pretty cool, right? But really, just looking at it, I think that is a genuine possibility."<\/p>\n

Perhaps it fired a few non-American swimmers up, giving them added motivation to ensure King would eat her words.<\/p>\n

Whatever effect it had, it's been a meet in which the US women have far from dominated, with female Australians – for example – collecting a heavy bag of gold medals thanks to the heroics from Ariarne Titmus, Emma McKeon and Kaylee McKeown and the world record-breaking 4x100m freestyle relay team.<\/p>\n

In fact, the US have won just two of the individual events so far in Tokyo compared to Australia's meet-leading four victories.<\/p>\n

King handled this morning's defeat with humility, embracing Schoenmaker in the pool after finishing just under a second behind the South African's time of 2:18.95.<\/p>\n

But afterwards she was as outspoken as ever, and ironically – given her pre-Tokyo cockiness – potentially taking a dig at the high expectations the US swim team has to deal with.<\/p>\n

"Pardon my French, but the fact that we're not able to celebrate silver and bronze is bulls–t," the 24-year-old said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

King, a two-time Olympic gold medalist at Rio 2016, won bronze in the women's 100m breaststroke earlier in the week in a race won by Alaskan teammate Lydia Jacoby<\/a>.<\/p>\n

King went out fast and turned first at the halfway mark before Schoenmaker accelerated to her reel her in with a perfectly-timed swim.<\/p>\n

"To be honest, I still feels so unreal," said Schoenmaker after becoming the first female South African to claim an Olympic swimming gold since 1996 when Penny Heyns won both the 100m and 200m breaststroke.<\/p>\n

"I think my emotions in the pool showed I was pretty shocked. "When we got to the last turn, it was like, it's everyone's race now, that was the hard part because I saw she (King) was turning with me."<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0clicking here!<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US swim star Lilly King had a fair bit to say in the lead-up to the Tokyo Games, and she's spiced things up again after […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108526"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108528,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108526\/revisions\/108528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}