Ryan Lochte wins gold in 400IM, but Michael Phelps fails to medal

It might get spun as a belly flop for Michael Phelps, but Ryan Lochte's swim to a gold medal in the 400-meter individual medley at the Olympic Games on Saturday was nothing short of brilliant.  Ripping through a backstroke split three seconds faster than any competitor, the American swimmer avenged a narrow loss to Phelps in the 2008 games, even coming up just short of a world record. Phelps, meanwhile, faded to a non-medaling fourth behind Brazil's Thiago Pereira and Japan's Kosuke Hagino – an outcome that might have been predicted when Phelps was the last qualifier in the morning heats to make it into the final. "You can't win the gold medal from the morning," he said then.  Or from Lochte's wake, either.