Five gold medals! Caeleb Dressel of Green Cove Springs wins two more; Ryan Murphy gold in relay

At 9:32 p.m. Eastern time, Caeleb Dressel reached for the wall, and the scoreboard told the story.

Fastest on the planet, without dispute.

And that was only the beginning.

The former Clay High School and University of Florida champion launched himself into the aquatic stratosphere Saturday night, completing the clean sweep of sprints with his 50-meter freestyle victory in Olympic record time at the Tokyo Aquatics Center.

Then, he lined up with longtime teammate Ryan Murphy from Bolles School to win the Games' final event in the pool, the men's 4x100 medley relay, in world-record time.

That was Dressel's fifth gold of the Games — his seventh overall — and Murphy's third medal and first gold in Tokyo, capping a Jacksonville sports week never to be forgotten.

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No doubt in 50 free

In the 50 free, Dressel left little doubt.

Springing from the lane four block with his patented explosion, he touched the wall in 21.07 in the single-length sprint across the pool and entered the history books as Northeast Florida's all-time Olympic medal leader.

Silver medalist Florent Manaudou of France, bronze medalist Bruno Fratus of Brazil and a field of the world's fastest sprinters couldn't chase him down. They couldn't even come close.

Dressel overcame runner-up Manaudou, a three-time medalist at the distance, by nearly a half-second at 0.48 — by this event's standards, a massive gap.

By comparison, the last five Olympic finals in the men's 50 free had been decided by 0.01 seconds, 0.20 seconds, 0.15 seconds, 0.01 seconds and a dead heat between Americans Anthony Ervin and Gary Hall Jr. in 2000.

A relay to remember

Then came a relay to make history.

Swimming from lane one, Murphy started the Americans out with the lead off the backstroke leg in 52.3. Michael Andrew kept the U.S. team in the hunt, preventing British breaststroke ace Adam Peaty from pulling away.

Afterward came Dressel, launching into the water on the butterfly leg and unleashing a mighty 49.03 100, which would have broken his own world record of 49.45 had it been an individual race.

Freestyler Zach Apple brought the Americans to the line in a world-record 3:26.78, 73 hundredths of a second clear of Great Britain, with Italy taking the bronze.

Dressel's elite company: Matt Biondi, Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz

The 100 free, the 100 butterfly and now the fastest event in the sport — all gold, all coming back to Green Cove Springs.

Never before had one man won all three at a single Olympics. Matt Biondi came closest in 1988 in Seoul, winning three relays and both freestyle sprints, only for Bolles School graduate Anthony Nesty of Suriname to edge him out by one-hundredth of a second in the 100 fly.

Dressel joins a short, elite list of American male swimmers to win both five gold medals at the same Olympics: Biondi, Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz. Of that group, only Dressel, Phelps and Spitz won three of their golds in individual races.

Dressel already entered the night with three gold medals in Tokyo to go with his two relay golds from Rio de Janeiro. 

Since arriving in Japan, he has led off the victorious men's 4x100 free relay; captured the title of world's fastest swimmer in the pool's traditional showcase sprint, the 100 free; and surpassed his own world record in the 100 butterfly, stretching into the wall in 49.45 seconds on Friday night.

His golden summer in Japan further cements his place as the world's most complete and dominant sprinter in the pool, coming off his FINA World Championships in 2017 and 2019. Dressel won seven gold medals at the 2017 finals in Budapest, Hungary, and captured eight — six gold — in 2019 in Gwangju, South Korea.

Gold arrives for Ryan Murphy

After three golds in Rio, Murphy finally earned his first gold in Tokyo.

He had finished third in the 100 back and second in the 200 back, both times behind Russian swimmer Evgeny Rylov.

But he turned the tables on Rylov and his Russian Olympic Committee team in the opening leg, setting the stage for victory from the outside lane.

Murphy now brings his career count to six medals at the Olympics: four gold, one silver and one bronze.