Swimming at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay

Men's 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay at the Games of the XXXI Olympiad
The American final team (Adrian, Held, Phelps, and Dressel), celebrating their gold medal victory.
Venue	Olympic Aquatics Stadium
Dates	7 August 2016 (heats & final)
Competitors	73 from 16 nations
Teams	16
Winning time	3:09.92
Medalists
01 !  United States Caeleb Dressel, Michael Phelps, Ryan Held, Nathan Adrian, Jimmy Feigen*, Blake Pieroni*, Anthony Ervin* 02 !  France Mehdy Metella, Fabien Gilot, Florent Manaudou, Jérémy Stravius, William Meynard*, Clément Mignon* 03 !  Australia James Roberts, Kyle Chalmers, James Magnussen, Cameron McEvoy, Matthew Abood* *Indicates the swimmer only competed in the preliminary heats.
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01 !		United States Caeleb Dressel, Michael Phelps, Ryan Held, Nathan Adrian, Jimmy Feigen*, Blake Pieroni*, Anthony Ervin*
02 !		France Mehdy Metella, Fabien Gilot, Florent Manaudou, Jérémy Stravius, William Meynard*, Clément Mignon*
03 !		Australia James Roberts, Kyle Chalmers, James Magnussen, Cameron McEvoy, Matthew Abood* *Indicates the swimmer only competed in the preliminary heats.

The men's 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay event at the 2016 Summer Olympics took place on 7 August at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium.

Four years after losing the Olympic gold to the Frenchmen in this event, the U.S. men's team was able to get back on top of the podium at these Games. Holding a tight race against the field on the lead-off leg by Caeleb Dressel (48.10), Michael Phelps threw down a 47.12 split on the second leg to move the Americans to the front, until he handed the youngster Ryan Held (47.73) and veteran Nathan Adrian their relay duties at the remaining exchanges of the race. Adrian delivered a fastest split in the field with an anchor of 46.97 to race against the Frenchmen towards a gold-medal finish in 3:09.92. As the Americans celebrated their victory, Phelps had officially come out of retirement two years earlier to extend his career resume with a nineteenth gold medal and twenty-third overall at his fifth straight Olympics.

France's Mehdy Metella (48.08), Fabien Gilot (48.20), and Florent Manaudou (47.14) handed Jérémy Stravius the anchor duties to chase down the Americans to the front, but Stravius' split of 47.11 was just good enough to settle them only for the silver in 3:10.53. Meanwhile, the Australian combination of James Roberts (48.88), Kyle Chalmers (47.38), James Magnussen (48.11), and Cameron McEvoy (47.00) snatched the bronze in 3:11.37 to hold off the Russian quartet of Andrey Grechin (48.68), Danila Izotov (48.00), Vladimir Morozov (47.31), and Alexander Sukhorukov (47.65) by nearly three tenths of a second, a fourth-place time in 3:11.64.