He went out in the way he came in: not in first.
It is hard to remember that Michael Phelps first appeared at the Olympic Games in 2000 when he was only 15 years old in Sydney, and he finished down under in fifth place in the 200-meter butterfly.
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Between now and then, he swam in 15 individual Olympic races and lost only twice. So maybe it isn’t so devastating that he ceded the gold medal in the 100-meter butterfly at the 2016 Rio Olympics to Joseph Schooling of Singapore, or even that he shared the silver medal with both Chad Le Clos of South Africa and Lazlo Cseh of Hungary.