Freddie Bousquet upstaged Michael Phelps to bring the curtain down on the Charlotte Ultraswim meet in dramatic style in North Carolina on Sunday night.
Phelps, 23, was returning to competition for the first time since his record-breaking eight gold medal-winning haul at last summer's Beijing heroics, albeit delayed by a three-month suspension following the publication of photographs appearing to show him using equipment associated with marijuana use.
He had won the 200m freestyle and the 100m butterfly finals on Friday night and took silver behind world record holder Aaron Peirsol in the 100m backstroke final on Saturday night.
Resuming his search for a third gold medal of the meet at the Mecklenburg County Aquatic Centre, Phelps again had to settle for silver as Bousquet took the 100 metres freestyle final, an event the American had not swam in Beijing.
Phelps, 23, had qualified equal fastest with fellow American Ricky Berens in the morning's preliminaries with Frenchman Bousquet, the 50m free world record holder, fourth fastest behind Cullen Jones.
Bousquet, who had won the 50m free the previous night, got off to a strong start in the 100m final 24 hours later and was a full body length ahead of Phelps at the turn, made in a world-record paced 22.83 seconds.
Phelps, the only finalist not in a full body suit, rallied over the final 50m but could not reel in Bousquet who clocked a meet record 48.22 seconds with Phelps second in 49.04.
‘I'm not disappointed with my times, but my finishes were awful,’ Phelps said when asked to reflect on the meet as a whole.
‘So there are small things I need to work on but overall it was a pretty good meet.
‘I didn't expect some of these times but I'm back on track and from here I head to (the US Olympic training centre at) Colorado Springs for three weeks and I'm looking forward to that.’
