Caeleb Dressel of Green Cove Springs wins gold, breaks world record at Tokyo Olympics

Already crowned the fastest man in the water, Caeleb Dressel isn't slowing down.

Instead, he's making sure that world records are going down.

The former Clay High School and University of Florida swimming star set a world record and won his third gold medal in Friday night's Olympic 100-meter butterfly swimming final at the Tokyo Aquatics Center.

Gold at the start of the night. A sprint semifinal, 46 minutes later. A relay dash, 27 minutes after that.

The night will enter the books as Dressel's triple play in the pool. Defying the fatigue, defeating the nerves, he did not disappoint.

His first two swims were smashing home runs, his third a relay strikeout derailed by circumstances beyond his control, and his reward was another gold to raise his career Olympic collection to five, most ever among Northeast Florida athletes.

Caeleb Dressel breaks record in 100 fly

Opening a frenetic evening of three races in 80 minutes, Dressel touched the wall in 49.45 in the two-length 100 fly, holding off Hungarian Kristof Milak by 0.23 seconds — the first men's swimming world record of the Tokyo Games and his fifth career gold at the Olympics. Switzerland's Noe Ponti won bronze.

Milak charged hard down the stretch, breaking the European record, splashing stroke for stroke on his way to become the second-fastest butterfly swimmer ever. But Dressel had just enough left.

The victory, in perhaps his most dominant event — Dressel also won the 100 fly at both the 2017 and 2019 world championships — further cemented his status as the sport's king of the sprints.

After mounting the podium for the medal ceremony, then a quick return to the water to prepare for the next test, Dressel left no doubt in the sport's fastest event.

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Dressel takes top seed in 50 free

Just 46 minutes after his 100 fly triumph, Dressel also staked his claim for the top overall seed in the 50 free.

Taking on the fastest event in swimming, he burst from the blocks to reach the wall in 21.42 for the best time of the semis.

He entered Saturday night's final with the top semifinal time, a tenth of a second clear of 2012 champion and 2016 silver medalist Florent Manaudou of France.

In the blink-and-you-miss-it sprint, only 0.36 seconds separated the eight final-round qualifiers.

Trouble in mixed medley relay: Goggles failure for Lydia Jacoby

A bizarre moment, though, helped to dash Dressel's hopes for a two-medal night and marred the American result in the first-ever mixed medley relay at the Olympics. That mishap also denied what could have been a sixth Olympic medal for backstroke champion and Bolles School graduate Ryan Murphy, who led off a four-swimmer American team with Lydia Jacoby (breaststroke), Torri Huske (butterfly) and Dressel (freestyle).

Murphy easily outdistanced the Russian Olympic Committee's 100 back champion Evgeny Rylov in the opening leg, but trouble afterward saw the United States slip from first place to eighth. Breaststroke swimmer Jacoby, the 17-year-old from Alaska who won the 100 breast gold medal earlier this week, had to race nearly her entire leg with her goggles blocking her face after they wiggled loose following her plunge into the pool.

Even Dressel's 46.99 anchor leg, the fastest of the event, couldn't erase a team deficit of eight seconds. Great Britain captured gold in a world record 3:37.58, followed by China and Australia. The Americans placed fifth.

Dressel already entered the night with two gold medals in Tokyo: the 100-meter freestyle, traditionally viewed as the sport's highest-profile sprint, and the 4x100 free relay. He had also earned two gold medals on relays with the United States team at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

With the results, the 24-year-old from Green Cove Springs is rapidly climbing the list of most decorated Olympians and swimmers in Sunshine State history, and he appears far from finished.

Dressel rocketed to the top of the global swimming world in 2017 when he won seven gold medals at the FINA World Championships in Budapest, Hungary. He followed that feat with eight medals, six of them gold, at the 2019 worlds in Gwangju, South Korea.

Bolles Sharks club teammates Dressel and Murphy are expected to team up again in Saturday's men's medley relay final, the last swimming event in the pool of these Olympics.