In a fast-starting Olympic final, David Rudisha ran 1:42 to defend his Olympic title in Rio. Clayton Murphy became the third-fastest 800m runner in American history with a 1:42.93 performance for a bronze medal. It's the first American male 800m medal since 1992--three years before Murphy was born.



Results:
1. 1:42.15 David Rudisha (KEN)
2. 1:42.61 Taoufik Makhloufi (ALG)
3. 1:42.93 Clayton Murphy (USA)
4. 1:43.41 Pierre-Ambroise Bosse (FRA)
5. 1:43.55 Ferguson Rotich (KEN)
6. 1:44.20 Marcin Lewandowski (POL)
7. 1:46.02 Alfred Kipketer (KEN)
8. 1:46.15 Boris Berian (USA)

Rudisha is the first man to defend his Olympic 800m title since Peter Snell did so in 1964, and delivered the third straight win for Kenya.

It was a weird race. Rudisha's teammate Alfred Kipketer took out the race hard, coming through 200 meters in 23.2 seconds with Rudisha right behind and the rest of the field two or three meters back. But then Kipketer slowed down the pace, and the field caught up to him for a 49.3 400m split. Rudisha shared the lead for much of the second lap, with Makhloufi and Bosse chasing and the rest of the field running more conservatively.

Murphy--whose PR was 1:50 at the end of 2014--played it perfectly. He gently bumped Berian to get out of a box with 230 meters to go, worked his way to fourth by the homestretch, and mowed down Bosse in the last 30 meters.

The race was fast as hell. Rudisha's 1:42.15 is more than a second off his world and Olympic record, but only five men have ever run faster than that. Makhloufi's time makes him the seventeenth-fastest performer of all time, and Murphy is now the third fastest American ever. 

Makhloufi's performance should not be overlooked between Rudisha's greatness and Murphy's Americanness. He's the first man to become an Olympic medalist in both the 1500m and 800m since current IAAF president Sebastian Coe medalled in both in the 1980 and '84 Games.

For Murphy, it's been a rise that dozens of blogs and Ohio newspapers will justifiably call "meteoric." At the beginning of 2015, his 800m PR was 1:50. At the beginning of 2016, he was a 20-year-old college junior with zero NCAA titles. In June, his plan was to run the 1500m at the Olympic Trials before missing the Olympic standard by an at the time seemingly-agonizing 0.03 seconds at the Portland Track Festival.

Two days before that race, Texas A&M freshman Donavan Brazier ran 1:43.55 for a NCAA record that track fans justifiably lost their collective minds over. Murphy, who turned pro after finishing his junior season at Akron, ran more than half a second faster than that tonight. 

It's a genuinely historic medal for Murphy and the United States. Johnny Gray won the last American medal in the Olympic 800m in Barcelona in 1992, though Rich Kenah and Nick Symmonds medalled at the world championships between now and then.

Gray is still the American record holder, and his pupil Duane Solomon is still No. 2. But Murphy's run tonight surpassed Symmonds's 2012 Olympic time, making Murphy the No.3 American ever and the fourth one under 1:42. The Akron product taking bronze means that athletes from MAC schools have three of the last five American medals in the men's 800, in a period spanning 44 years.