The most decorated Olympian of all time swims for his final individual gold medal of the London Olympics

Also on NBC tonight:

Missy Franklin Swims 200M Backstroke Gold Medal Final

Men’s 50M Freestyle Swim on NBC in Primetime and Track and Field Begins

Did you catch all of the action last night? Upsets, broken records (Soni!), Olympic champions crowned – truly an electrifying evening of Olympics on NBC! You can get all of the results, schedules, and recaps, here: http://bit.ly/Rhzpvr

For those of you who are keeping count, last night puts the US at 37 medals (18G, 9S, 10B), China at 35 medals (18G, 11S, 6B) and Japan at 19 medals (2G, 6S, 11B). GO TEAM USA!

Be sure to tune-in tonight at 8 p.m. and watch Michael Phelps swim his last individual event of the Games, the 100m Butterfly – will he win the gold like he did last year (by .01 of a second!)? Will Missy Franklin break the 200m Backstroke world record? Also tonight kicks off the long-awaited track and field medal rounds. Don’t miss the Men’s Shot Put gold medal final – sure to be an explosive and exciting event to watch!

Upcoming Primetime Programming on NBC:

FRIDAY, AUGUST 3 (Day 7)

8 p.m. – Midnight (ET/PT)

Swimming – Gold Medal Finals

Men’s 100M Butterfly

Men’s 50M Freestyle

Women’s 200M Backstroke

Women’s 800M Freestyle

Track and Field – Men’s Shot Put Gold Medal Final

Women’s Diving – Springboard Qualifying

Women’s Volleyball – U.S. vs. Serbia

Men’s Gymnastics – Trampoline Gold Medal Final

• Michael Phelps hits the water for his final individual race – the 100m butterfly, which he memorable won in Beijing over Serbia’s Milorad Cavic by just .01 seconds – a margin undetectable to the naked eye. Colorado phenom Missy Franklin is a heavy favorite in the 200m backstroke and figures to threaten the world record. While another teenager, Bethesda, Maryland native Katie Ledecky, who at 15 is the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic swim team, swims in the 800m freestyle, in which Great Britain’s reigning Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington is the favorite. The night also includes the men’s 50m freestyle. Known as the “splash and dash,” the fastest event in swimming is notoriously hard to predict, but Auburn-trained Brazilian Cesar Cielo has done his best to take the mystery out of the results, winning this event in Beijing as well as at the two world championships since. Chasing him will be 2008 relay gold medalist Cullen Jones and Anthony Ervin, the 2000 co-gold medalist in this event who remarkably returned to the top of the sport after a nearly decade-long absence.
• On the first night of track and field, the U.S. has three strong medal contenders in the men’s shot put in Reese Hoffa, Christian Cantwell and Ryan Whiting– all of whom own world championship titles. Hoffa, who can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute, posted the world’s best throw at the Olympic Trials.
• In women’s volleyball, Team USA, which faces an up-and-coming Serbia squad tonight, is favored for its first ever Olympic gold medal. It would be the second in a row for the team’s head coach Hugh McCutcheon, who coached the U.S. men to the Olympic title in 2008.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 4 (Day 8)

8 p.m. – Midnight (ET/PT)

Swimming – Gold Medal Finals

Men’s and Women’s 4 x 100M Medley Relays

Men’s 1500M Freestyle

Women’s 50M Freestyle

Track and Field – Gold Medal Finals

Men’s Long Jump

Women’s 100M

Beach Volleyball – Elimination Round

Women’s Diving – Springboard Semifinals

·         On the last night of swimming, Michael Phelps is back in the pool for the final time, leading Team USA in the medley relay, which the Americans have won every time they’ve raced. Phelps will swim the butterfly leg of the relay, a fitting bookend to an Olympic career that began 12 years ago in Sydney, when he swam the 200m butterfly as a 15-year-old. In the women’s medley relay, the Americans are strong favorites to overtake 2008 Olympic champion Australia and win gold, as they did at the 2011 World Championships. Teen sensation Missy Franklin is expected to anchor. And in the men’s 1500m, swimmers will swim nearly a full mile in pursuit of Olympic gold. Sun Yang, who was born in China but trains in Australia, is the world record holder.

·         At the Olympic Stadium, the USA-Jamaica sprint rivalry promises to heat up the London track. In the women’s 100m, Los Angeles native Carmelita Jeter, a first-time Olympian at 32, is the reigning world champion and the second-fastest woman ever over 100m. She’ll face a strong challenge from a formidable trio from Jamaica. In the heptathlon, Beijing silver medalist Hyleas Fountain, who grew up idolizing the great Jackie Joyner-Kersee, is looking to upgrade to gold in her second Olympics.

In women’s springboard diving, Chicago’s Christina Loukas is looking to build on her fourth-place finish at last year’s world championships and reach the Olympic podium. While former Stanford star Cassidy Krug, who quit diving for a year after failing in her second attempt to make an Olympic team in 2008, defeated Loukas at Trials and, at 27, is diving better than ever before.