[1] Shaking off a potential false start due to fan noise, China's Sun Yang put together a marvelous swim with a relentless attack on his world record to strike a long-distance freestyle double at the Olympic Games for the first time, since the Soviet Union's Vladimir Salnikov did so in 1980.

Leading from the start, Sun quickly dropped two seconds under a world-record pace, as he pulled away further from the rest of the field to smash his own standard with a stunning gold-medal time in 14:31.02.

[2][3] Trailing behind the leader by 8.61 seconds on a dominant fashion, Canada's Ryan Cochrane held off a close battle from Tunisia's defending champion Oussama Mellouli for the silver in an American record of 14:39.63.

[4][5] Meanwhile, Mellouli faded down the stretch to pick up a bronze in 14:40.31, edging out of South Korea's Park Tae-hwan (14:50.61) by a wide margin of 10.3 seconds.

[6][8] Notable swimmers missed the final including Jaeger's teammate Andrew Gemmell, Ukraine's Sergiy Frolov, Hungary's Gergő Kis, and British home favorite David Davies, bronze medalist in Athens eight years earlier.