His finish Friday night came just 0.01 seconds ahead of France’s Florent Manadou, and provided a reminder of just how far Ervin has come since he burst onto the Olympic stage when he was still a teenager, when his hair was blonder and he wore earrings.

Friday gave Ervin the perfect bookend to what has been a wild career, one that began with the prodigious success as a teenager and nearly ended there. Ervin eventually left the sport for almost a decade.

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Ervin was crippled by drug and alcohol addiction for a time. He grew dreadlocks and played guitar for a heavy-metal band called Weapons of Mass Destruction. He auctioned off his Sydney gold medal for $17,101 in 2004 to help aid the tsunami-relief efforts in Indonesia. And Ervin reportedly tried to commit suicide at one point, the low point before he eventually pulled himself back toward swimming.

He began to make an earnest comeback ahead of the 2012 Olympics, qualifying for the London Games by finishing second at the U.S. swimming trials in the 50 free. That was a personal best, and although he finished fifth in the event in London, he continued toward the unthinkable prospect of swimming in Rio as a 35-year-old.

But Ervin says he’s not done.

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“I’m gonna try and make the [2020] Tokyo [Olympic] team of course,” he said post-race. “Obviously I like being in an environment where I can keep trying to swim to the best of my potential and I don’t think my age should limit me to that and I don’t think fear of defeat should limit that either because I don’t think about winning or losing, it’s just about being the best I can be for me and those that supported me.”

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Phelps, who this week has answered wave after wave of questions about his age and whether he’ll be competing in the 2020 Games, would be 35 come Tokyo.