4 × 200 m freestyle relay, men

What to remember

Michael Phelps led off, Ryan Lochte brought it home: on July 31, 2009, at the World Championships in Rome, the United States won the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay in 6 min 58.55 s, with Ricky Berens and David Walters swimming the middle legs.

The four splits sit close together. Phelps opened in 1:44.49, Berens swam the fastest leg in 1:44.13, Walters went 1:45.47 and Lochte finished in 1:44.46.

Phelps won more Olympic medals than any other athlete, 28 in total, including 23 golds. At the 2008 Beijing Games he won eight golds, breaking Mark Spitz's 1972 mark of seven wins at a single Olympics. The 4 × 200 m freestyle is one of the events in which he kept his Olympic title over four consecutive Games, and he won 26 world titles in long course between 2001 and 2011. The men's relay has been Olympic since 1908 and part of the World Aquatics Championships since 1973. The women's race arrived later, in 1986 at the World Championships and in 1996 at the Olympics.