Torri Huske claims a starring role for U.S. team at Paris Olympics

NANTERRE, Australia (AP) — While some of the biggest names in American swimming have faltered, Torri Huske has claimed a starring role at the Paris Olympics.

The 21-year-old Virginian picked up her second gold of the Summer Games, anchoring the U.S. team to a world record in the 4x100-meter mixed medley relay Saturday night.

She also has two silver medals to help ease the sting of swimmers such as Caeleb Dressel, Simone Manuel and Ryan Murphy coming up short of expectations.

Huske will have a shot at one more medal on the final night of swimming when she takes part in the women’s 4x100 medley relay.

“This meet has been great and this meant so much to me. The world record with these three is just like unbelievable,” said the 21-year-old Huske, who was joined on the mixed relay by Murphy, Nic Fink and Gretchen Walsh.

For the wacky event, in which each team uses two men and two women with no restriction on who swims which stroke, the U.S. sent out Murphy and Fink in the first two slots, saving Walsh for the butterfly and Huske to be the freestyle anchor.

She dove in with a lead of just four-hundredths of a second over China’s Yang Junxuan, and zealously guarded it as they went down the pool and back, side by side all the way.

Huske touched in 3 minutes, 37.43 seconds, beating Yang to the wall by just 0.12.

Good enough to break the world record set by Britain at the Tokyo Olympics, when the mixed medley made its debut with the Americans posting a disappointing fifth-place finish.

A much better result this time, bringing another gold medal to an American team that has dealt with its share of disappointment at these games. That includes Walsh’s older sister, Alex, getting disqualified from the 200 individual medley a little over an hour before the relay for after it appeared she had claimed a bronze. Officials ruled that Alex had not completed the backstroke leg of her race on her back, turning too soon.

Huske, whose mother was an architect in China before emigrating to the U.S, began to emerge as a potential star when she competed in five events — more than any other woman — at the pandemic-delayed American trials in 2021.

She only qualified in one individual event for Tokyo, the 100 butterfly, and endured the heartbreak of a fourth-place finish by one-hundredth of a second. The sting of that setback was a bit offset by a silver in the 4x100 freestyle relay.

Now, Huske has a hefty collection of medals, though she still sounds like an awestruck kid on the U.S. team.

She kept pointing to her teammates as the reason for her success.

“I feel like they make it so easy to be confident because they’re the best in the world,” Huske said. “I’m just so lucky that I get to have them by my side.”

The feeling surely goes both ways.

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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games