That said, claiming the top step on the Olympic medal podium is no longer a given for U.S. swimmers.

Nine days of thrilling competition at La Defense Arena wrapped up Sunday night with the Americans barely pulling out the lead in the gold medal standings thanks to a victory in the last race.

The U.S. finished with just eight golds, its fewest since the 1988 Seoul Games and one ahead of its biggest rival, Australia.

More notably, the rest of the world totaled more victories (20) than the United States and Australia combined, the first time that’s happened since the 1996 Atlanta Games.

The Americans will certainly be intent on improving their performance heading into the home games at Los Angeles in 2028, when swimming will have in its largest, most spectacular setting yet — a temporary pool inside SoFi Stadium with a capacity for some 38,000 fans.

Still, with more and more international swimmers getting their training in the U.S. — and prominent American coaches such as Bob Bowman spreading their knowledge to other countries — a more diverse list of gold medalists is likely to be the norm going forward.

“This sport is growing and I can’t help but feel like we’ve been a part of that,” American gold medalist Bobby Finke said. “It’s something we should take home and be proud of.”

Two of the biggest swimming stars in Paris, France’s Léon Marchand and Canada’s Summer McIntosh, train in the U.S. but won a bevy of medals for their home countries.

Marchand, who captured four individual golds as well as a relay bronze, is coached by Bowman, best known as the guy who guided Michael Phelps throughout his record-setting career. It was a bit strange to see Bowman in a France shirt, working on the coaching staff of Marchand’s nation.

After a break to savor his Olympic triumph, Marchand will return to the U.S. to continue his work with Bowman, who now heads the swimming program at the University of Texas.

“Look at Bob Bowman. He doesn’t care if you’re from the USA or whatever,” said Shane Ryan, an American-born swimmer who competes for Ireland. “He just wants to coach the fastest swimmers at all times.”

McIntosh trains with a team in Sarasota, Florida, where she honed the form that produced three individual gold medals — the most ever by a Canadian athlete — and a silver.

“I think competition is great,” said longtime American stalwart Ryan Murphy, who trains with several international athletes at Cal-Berkeley including Spain’s Hugo González. “He’s pushed me a lot. There’s plenty of days where he’s right next to me and helping me get better.”

Murphy said it’s only natural in today’s information-driven world that more nations are rising up to challenge the U.S.

“People will take a video of what they’re doing in practice and put it up on social media right away,” he said. “The learning curve is so quick around the world. That’s a big reason why there’s so many talented athletes across the world now.”

The U.S. certainly has its shining moments in Paris.

Katie Ledecky won two more golds, moving her into a tie for second place among all athletes on the career list with nine. She also joined Phelps as the only swimmers to win the same event at four straight Summer Games with her victory in the 800-meter freestyle.

The women’s team produced several more stars, including Torri Huske (three golds, two silvers), Gretchen Walsh (two golds, two silvers) and Regan Smith (two golds, three silvers).

But there were plenty of disappointments, particular on the men’s side.

Caeleb Dressel, a big star at the Tokyo Games with five gold medals, finished sixth in the 50 freestyle and didn’t even qualify for the final of the 100 butterfly.

Murphy settled for a bronze in the 100 backstroke and, like Dressel, failed to qualify for the final of his other individual event, the 200 back.

In all, the American men produced only two gold medals, and they didn’t pick up an individual victory until Finke’s world record in the 1,500 freestyle on the final night.

“You always want to be better,” said Anthony Nesty, head coach of the men’s team. “Yes, we want our athletes to win gold medals, but the other teams have great athletes as well. We have to go back, all the coaches in the U.S., get back on it and hopefully four years from now we have a better result. From the men, for sure.”

The depth of the American team remains its biggest strength. Even with four of its most prominent stars — Dressel, Murphy, Lilly King and Simone Manuel — managing only one individual medal (Murphy’s bronze in the 100 back), the U.S. easily led the overall medals table with 28.

Three of the four world records set at the meet came from the Americans, two of them in relays.

“Whether our athletes won a gold medal or failed to make a semifinal or whatever it might be,” said U.S. women’s coach Todd DeSorbo, “you’ve got to learn from it, go back home and be better.”

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Was all that toil since the last Olympics — all the work on the practice track and in the weight room in the name of finding a centimeter here or a millisecond there — really going to be worth all the trouble?

Ten seconds passed, then 20. Then, nearly 30. And then, the answer popped up.

Yes, Lyles is the 100-meter champion at the Paris Olympics. The World’s Fastest Man.

Just not by very much.

The American showman edged out Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson on Sunday by five-thousandths of a second — that’s .005 of one tick of the clock — in a race for the ages.

The final tally in this one: Lyles 9.784 seconds, Thompson 9.789.

The new champion said that before he left for Paris, one of his physio guys ensured him this race would be a squeaker.

“He said, ‘This is how close first and second are going to be,’” Lyles said as he pinched his thumb and his forefinger together so they were almost touching. “I can’t believe how right he was.”

For perspective, the blink of an eye takes, on average, .1 second. That was 20 times longer than the gap between first and second.

It was so close, that when the sprinters crossed the line and the word “Photo” popped up next to the names of Lyles, Thompson and five others in the eight-man field, Lyles walked over to the Jamaican and said “I think you got the Olympics dog.”

Thompson, who raced three lanes to the left of Lyles and had no clue where he was on the track, wasn’t convinced.

“I was, ‘Wow, I’m not even sure, because it was that close,’” the Jamaican said.

Time would tell. It always does. When Lyles’ name came up first, he snatched his name tag off the front of his bib and held it to the sky. Moments later, he shouted at the TV camera: “America, I told you I got this!”

The first four racers were separated by less than .03. The top seven all finished within .09 of each other.

America’s Fred Kerley came in third at 9.81. “That’s probably one of the most beautiful races I’ve been in,” he said.

In the photo finish, Kerley’s orange shoe crossed the line before anyone, or anything. But it’s the chest breaking the barrier that counts. Lyles’ chest crossed first.

This was the closest 1-2 finish in the 100 since at least Moscow in 1980 — or maybe even ever.

Back then, Britain’s Allan Wells narrowly beat Silvio Leonard in an era when the electronic timers didn’t go into the thousandths of a second. The same was true in 1932, when Eddie Tolan won the Olympics’ first ever photo finish.

Lyles conceded that during the excruciating wait, he was pretty sure he had dipped his chest just a tad too soon. Dipping, it turns out, is one of the few things he doesn’t work on over and over again at his training track in Florida.

“But I would say I have a decent history with dipping,” he said, recalling races he won in high school and as a junior.

The 9.784 marked a new personal best for Lyles and made him the first American champion in the marquee race at the Olympics since Justin Gatlin in 2004.

Lyles is hoping to go even bigger than that, and maybe take this sport back to a day when it was Carl Lewis and Edwin Moses lighting up the track — a must-see affair, the likes of which Lyles headlined in front of around 80,000 on a warm night at the Stade de France.

The mission started after Lyles settled for a bronze medal in Tokyo in his favorite — and then, only — sprint, the 200. Those COVID-impacted Games were a terrible experience for Lyles. He rededicated himself to bettering his mental health, but also looked for a new mission — the 100 meters and, with it, a chance at track immortality.

The practice was tough for a sprinter never known as a great starter, but he stuck with it. When he won the world championships last year, then backed it up by winning the 200, his goal for Paris was very much in sight.

But when he came into the Olympic final having finished second in both his qualifying races and staring across at one sprinter who had run faster than him this year — Thompson — and another who had beaten him twice this year — Jamaica’s Oblique Seville — he knew this would be no coronation.

Thompson added another roadblock when, during the introduction, he let out a primal scream, the likes of which Lyles has been unleashing in some of his biggest races.

“I thought ‘Man, that’s my thing, that’s crazy,’” Lyles said.

Lyles galloped and leapt about 20 yards down the track before returning to the starting line, where the runners waited some three minutes for the gun to finally sound.

It was worth the wait.

Now, the question that could be debated for years is: What was the difference in this one?

Could it have been Lyles’ closing speed and that lean into the line that he thought was mistimed?

Was it his ability to stay in reach of everyone among this straight line of sprinters over the first 60 meters — a skill he’s been working on in tedious practice after practice since he took on the shorter sprint?

The answer: all that and more.

“Everyone in the field came out knowing they could win this race,” Lyles said.

It took 9.784 seconds, then about 30 seconds more, for the scoreboard to flash the name of the man who actually did.

“Seeing that name, I was like ‘Oh my gosh, there it is!’” Lyles said.

Gold (and bronze) for Ukrainian high jumpers
Yaroslava Mahuchikh won Olympic gold in the high jump for her war-torn country of Ukraine and, as a bonus, had company. Her teammate Iryna Gerashchenko won the bronze and the teammates hopped, skipped and jumped around the track parading their blue-and-yellow flags in a heartfelt celebration.

Mahuchikh needed fewer tries to clear the winning height of 2 meters than Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers, and so, added the sport’s biggest prize of all — Olympic gold — to her world championship and world record.

Kerr vs Ingebrigtsen is a go for heated men’s 1,500
The best rivalry in track will culminate Tuesday when reigning world champion Josh Kerr of Britain takes on defending Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway.

They squared off in Sunday’s semifinal, too, and Ingebrigtsen edged out the Brit, looking over to him twice as they surged down the homestretch, to win a race that felt like it meant more than it should have in 3:32.38.

“They should be expecting one of the most vicious and hardest 1,500s the sport’s seen in a very long time,” Kerr said.

Did Ingebrigtsen agree?

“Depends who you ask, maybe,” he said. “I mean, racing is what you want it to be.”

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The gymnastics superstar earned a third trip to her sport’s biggest stage by cruising to victory at the U.S. Olympic trials on Sunday night, posting a two-day all-around total of 117.225 to clinch the lone automatic spot on the five-woman team.

Three years removed from the Tokyo Olympics — where she pulled out of multiple finals to prioritize her safety and becoming a touchstone on the importance of mental health in the process — Biles returns to the games looking perhaps as good as ever at 27.

“Trusting the process and (my coaches), I knew I’d be back,” Biles said.

Biles isn’t going alone.

Reigning Olympic champion Sunisa Lee, 2020 Olympic floor exercise champion Jade Carey, 2020 Olympic silver medalist Jordan Chiles and 16-year-old Hezly Rivera were named to the five-woman team later Sunday night. Joscelyn Roberson and Leanne Wong are the alternates.

A trip to France has never really been in doubt for Biles since she returned from a two-year break last summer. All she’s done over the last 12 months is win a sixth world all-around title and her eighth and ninth national championship — both records — while further cementing her status as the best-ever in her sport.

Biles will be a prohibitive favorite to bookend the Olympic gold she won in 2016, though there is plenty to work on before women’s qualifying on July 28.

She backpedaled after landing her Yurchenko double pike vault, a testament to both the vault’s difficulty and the immense power she generates during a skill few male gymnasts try and even fewer land as cleanly.

Biles hopped off the beam after failing to land her side aerial, though she wasn’t quite as frustrated as she was during a sloppy performance on Friday that left her uttering an expletive for all the world to see.

Biles finished with a flourish on floor exercise, her signature event. Though there was a small step out of bounds, there was also the unmatched world-class tumbling that recently drew a shoutout from pop star Taylor Swift, whose song “Ready For It” opens Biles’ routine.

She stepped off the podium to a standing ovation, then sat down atop the steps to take in the moment in what could be her last competitive round on American soil for quite a while.

Next stop, Paris, where the Americans try to return to the top of the podium after finishing second to Russia three years ago.

Yet the Biles that will step onto the floor at Bercy Arena in four weeks isn’t the same one that left Tokyo.

She’s taken intentional steps to make sure her life is no longer defined by her gymnastics. Biles married Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens in the spring of 2023 and the two are building a house in the northern Houston suburbs they hope to move into shortly after Biles returns from Paris.

Biles heads to France as perhaps the face of the U.S. Olympic movement, though she’s well aware that more than a few of the millions that will tune in to watch next month will be checking to see if the demons that derailed her in Tokyo resurface.

And while there are still moments of anxiety — including at last year’s world championships — she has put safeguards in place to protect herself. She meets with a therapist weekly, even during competition season, something she didn’t do in preparation for the 2020 games.

Biles and the other four women who join her in France will be considered heavy favorites, particularly with defending Olympic champion Russia unable to compete as part of the fallout from the war in Ukraine.

The Americans will take their oldest women’s team ever to the games, as Biles’ unrivaled longevity — she hasn’t lost a meet she’s started and finished since 2013 — and the easing of rules around name, image and likeness rules at the NCAA level allowed Carey (24), Chiles (23) and Lee (21) to continue to compete while cashing in on their newfound fame at the same time.

They have relied on that experience to get back to this moment during a sometimes harrowing meet that saw leading contenders Shilese Jones, Skye Blakely and Kayla DiCello exit with leg injuries that took them out of the mix weeks before opening ceremonies.

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Athletes to Watch
Victor Montalvo (B-boy Victor), United States: A breaker who describes himself as a student of old school b-boys from the founding era of hip-hop, the 30-year-old Montalvo, who is from Kissimmee, Florida, qualified for Paris by besting all other b-boys at the 2023 WDSF World Breaking Championship in Belgium.

Sunny Choi (B-girl Sunny), United States: The 35-year-old Choi, a cheerful Queens, New York-bred breaker, has long been an ambassador for b-girls globally. She qualified for the Paris Games with her win at the 2023 Pan American Games in Chile.

Philip Kim (B-boy Phil Wizard), Canada: Consistently ranked in the top three b-boys in the international breaking competitive community, Kim secured a spot for Paris when he came out on top at last year’s Pan American Games.

Dominika Banevič (B-girl Nicka), Lithuania: Banevič was the youngest in her category at last year’s WDSF World Breaking Championship, when she punched her ticket to Paris. Banevič turns 17 this month.

Storylines to Follow
While breaking and hip-hop both originated in The Bronx, New York, in the 1970s, the art forms have extended far beyond the U.S., highlighting themes of racial and economic inequality and subcultures around the world.

Breaking is being given a global stage this summer for the first time, and hip-hop’s global reach will be on display perhaps in a way that it never has before. While many fans are excited the genre is being recognized on a massive scale, others are skeptical of attempts to co-opt the culture, commercialize it further and impose a rigid competitive structure. The spirit of hip-hop and breaking has been rooted in local communities and centered around street battles and living a b-boy or b-girl lifestyle.

For the Paris Games, judges will score breakers using what’s known as the Trivium judging system. A panel of five judges scores each breaker on creativity, personality, technique, variety, performativity and musicality. However, this system has its critics, who say it has been too heavily influenced by people who don’t understand breaking as an essential element of hip-hop culture.

Key Dates
The women’s competition is on Aug. 9, and the men’s competition is Aug. 10.

Reigning Champions
Because this is breaking’s debut at the Summer Games, there are no reigning Olympic champions.

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