Olympics: Caeleb Dressel wins gold in 100m freestyle

(AP) - Living up to the hype, American swimmer Caeleb Dressel has claimed the first individual Olympic gold medal of his career.

Dressel held off the defending Olympic champion, Australia's Kyle Chalmers, with a furious sprint to the wall. The winning time was an Olympic record of 47.02 seconds.

Dressel beat Chalmers by a mere six-hundredths of a second, leaving the 2016 winner with a silver medal this time. The bronze was claimed by Russia's Kliment Kolesenikov. The first three gold medals of Dressel's career were all in the relays. Now, he's got one earned all by himself.

China has also claimed its first gold medal at the Olympic pool.

Zhang Yufei turned in a dominating performance to win the women's 200-meter butterfly with an Olympic-record time of 2 minutes, 3.86 seconds. She was more than a body length ahead of the pair of Americans, Regan Smith and Hali Flickinger.

The U.S. swimmers dueled back and forth for the silver, with Smith pulling ahead at the end to touch in 2:05.30. Flickinger earned the bronze in 2:05.65.