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- U.S. swimmer Lilly King said it's "bulls—" that silver and bronze medals aren't as celebrated.
- King has won a silver and bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics after winning two golds in Rio.
- King has been gracious in her two races, celebrating with the gold-medal winners each time.
- Visit Insider's Olympics coverage for more stories.
American swimmer Lilly King believes any medal should be celebrated in the Olympics.
King on Friday took home her second medal of the Tokyo Olympics, a silver in the women's 200-meter breaststroke. She also won bronze in the 100-meter breaststroke.
It's an incredibly successful program for any swimmer, but for King, who won gold in both events in Rio 2016, it could be looked at as a letdown. King pushed back on that narrative on Friday.
"Pardon my French, but the fact that we're not able to celebrate silver and bronze is bulls—," King said, according to Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde.
King acknowledged that the high standards for the U.S. Olympic delegation often mean undervaluing silver and bronze medals.
"Just because we compete for the United States, and maybe we have extremely high standards for this sort of thing, that doesn't excuse the fact that we haven't been celebrating silver and bronze as much as gold," King said, according to Yahoo's Henry Bushnell.
Read more: Tokyo 2020 Olympics Medal Table
With the knowledge that any swimmer, of course, would prefer to finish in first place, King has also been gracious in finishing outside of first.
After losing to 17-year-old Lydia Jacoby in the 100-meter breaststroke, a race which King had dominated for years, King hugged Jacoby. In a post-race interview, King said, "We love to keep that gold in the USA family, so this kid just had the swim of her life, and I am so proud to be her teammate."
Jacoby later said in an interview with NBC that it meant a lot for King to be happy for her.
"It meant a lot to me," Jacoby told Savannah Guthrie. "That's tough. She's the reigning Olympic champion, and the reaction could've been very different. I was just so happy that she was so gracious and so amazing."
On Friday, after finishing behind Australia's Tatjana Schoenmaker and just ahead of teammate Annie Lazor, King joined them for a group hug in the pool.
-#TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) July 30, 2021
King on Friday said she was as happy with her Tokyo medals as she was with her Rio golds.
"I might be more happy with this medal than I've been with any of my previous medals, including the two golds in Rio," King said. "We really should be celebrating those silver and bronzes because those are some of the greatest moments of that athlete's career, and why would we not celebrate that?"