He said the choice was difficult, as he believed he would likely take silver in the 200m race behind American Michael Phelps, and the 100m will be competitive.
But he said would rather give himself a slightly better chance to win in the 100m - and become the first male athlete in history to win the event in three consecutive Olympics - than increase his overall medal count.
"I just want to win that one 100m race," the paper quoted him as saying
Damn I'm pretty disappointed, he's my favorite swimmer, dropping a certain medal in the 200 Free to try and fully be in top shape to 3-peak his 100m free, sucks a bit but successfully defending an olympic event twice is quite impressive.
Hopefully the Dutch can bring a soild 4x100m squad to this games. At the Athens Olympics in the 4x100 men relay, he put in what I think is the fastest 100m split i've seen, anchoring from 4th or 5th and pushing Netherlands to Silver.
Edited in:
In his anchor leg of the men's 4x100 free relay here, he destroyed what appeared to be the USA's lock on the silver by gaining nearly a body length on Jason Lezak in the space of 15 meters in the final fifty. He swam the leg in 46.79 seconds, which was more than a second faster than Lezak and the second-fastest relay split in history. (P.VDH also owns the first and third fastest splits.)
