South Cook News

A Palos Heights native has medaled in three events at the Tokyo Olympics, adding to his already impressive athletic resume.

U.S. swimmer Ryan Murphy won a gold medal in the 4x100 medley relay, a silver in the 200-meter backstroke and a bronze in the 100-meter backstroke, accomplishing feats he always imagined as a child, according to NBC Bay Area.

“As a kid, I always dreamed of going to the Olympics,” Murphy told CNBC Make It.

“As a kid, I always dreamed of going to the Olympics,” Ryan Murphy told CNBC Make It. | Facebook

Murphy qualified for the Olympic Games in the 100-meter backstroke at the 2020 USA Swimming Olympic Trials in June.

The games weren’t without a bit of controversy for Murphy following the backstroke event last week when Murphy, along with bronze medalist Luke Greenbank of Britain, raised doping concerns about the gold medal winner from Russia.   

Murphy was asked whether he thought the competition was clean and did not hold back on the doping scandal that plagued Russian athletes after the World Anti-Doping Agency discovered over 1,000 of the country’s athletes partaking in state-sponsored doping programs from 2011 to 2015, USA today reported.

“I think the thing that’s frustrating is that you can’t answer that question with 100 percent certainty,”  Murphy told The Washington Post. “I don’t know if it was 100 percent clean. And that’s because of things that have happened over the past. … There is a situation — and that’s a problem.”

Greenbank added that it’s maddening feeling that there should have been a bigger penalty for Russia to pay for being involved in the doping scandal.

Russian athletes are competing under the moniker Russian Olympic Committee as a workaround, USA Today reports, as the country is banned from being represented at the games.

Murphy can now add his Tokyo Olympic medals with his feats from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio when he brought home the gold in the 100 and 200-meter backstroke, and in the 4x100-meter men's medley relay together with Cody Miller, Michael Phelps, and Nathan Adrian, according to NBC Bay Area.

Murphy set a world record in the 100-meter backstroke with his relay split time of 51.85.