Olympics

sock puppet

Well the opening two days have been good. The Irish swimmers haven't done too bad considering that Cooney is aiming towards 2012 and Bree's main event is the 200m. A semifinal spot is definitely within his reach.

Phelps has 1 gold and World Record already and eased into the 200 free semi. I'd fancy him to take it in another World Record time.

The heats of the mens 4x100m relay have been the highlight so far for me. A world record and from the USA "B" team. I wonder what the first choice team will do. The French team also looked awesome. Inside the old world record and they're missing Bernard and Gilot. Should be an interesting final. I think it'll be very close between America, Australia and France.

longshanks

yeah i was watching the womens synchronised diving. which was nice

Andrewf20

Ive been fairly glued to the Olympics, especially the swimming.

roverjoyce

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!
just watched the 4 X 100 freestyle relay
that is what sport is all about
Magic

Marvinthefish

I watched Melanie Nocher's heat earlier today and was absolutely appalled. Coming just a day after Aisling Cooney's mediocre performance in the backstroke heats, I wonder do SwimIreland even care how the Irish competitors get on. I think only swimmers who achieved the A standard should have been sent to Beijing. If Nocher and Cooney were selected on the basis of their B standard times, why was someone like Barry Murphy (who also achieved Olympic B standard in 50m freestyle) not picked? Surely if we want to show the world our best swimming talent we should wait until they are prepared 100% and the team behind them is organised 100%.

Sergio

im in awe watching mr micheal phelps.what an athlete and inspiration to us all.i was wating him today in the heat for the 200m butterfly and the way he won the heat in the last 50m was outstanding!

sock puppet

Marvinthefish wrote: »

I watched Melanie Nocher's heat earlier today and was absolutely appalled. Coming just a day after Aisling Cooney's mediocre performance in the backstroke heats, I wonder do SwimIreland even care how the Irish competitors get on. I think only swimmers who achieved the A standard should have been sent to Beijing. If Nocher and Cooney were selected on the basis of their B standard times, why was someone like Barry Murphy (who also achieved Olympic B standard in 50m freestyle) not picked? Surely if we want to show the world our best swimming talent we should wait until they are prepared 100% and the team behind them is organised 100%.

Nocher was selected on her A standard time for the 200m backcrawl. She swam the 200 free like Bree did with the 100 breast. A warm up for their main event. The reason for Cooney being chosen and not Murphy I think was because she is 18 while he is almost 23. Swim Ireland said they selected her on the basis that she will more than likely be going to 2012. Although having said that i think he was hard done by.

Also speaking of olympic B times a lot of young Irish swimmers have achieved them over the summer. I'd say we'll have a strong enough squad by 2012. Relative to this years one anyway.

Also Nocher has herself to blame too. If her hat was too big so she couldn't put her goggles under it she could have easily worn her goggles on top of one hat and underneath a second. It's quite common and I've done it myself. If her goggles were to snap as she's lining up would she also not have a spare pair handy?



edit: Yes that relay was fantastic. Incredible finish and 2 world records broken. Lezak almost won that single handedly for them. I honestly thought that the french had bottled it but looking at the splits Bernard (their last swimmer) went about the same time as his old world record (allowing for reaction time) so he actually swam really well. Lezak swam a 46.06. If he could replicate that in an individual race he could go well under 47 seconds. If Sullivan swims well again and Bernard recovers from what was a crushing disappointment then I can see the 100m free final being every bit as good. If Bernard can win it it'll show tremendous mental toughness.

Mellor

Marvinthefish wrote: »

I watched Melanie Nocher's heat earlier today and was absolutely appalled. Coming just a day after Aisling Cooney's mediocre performance in the backstroke heats, I wonder do SwimIreland even care how the Irish competitors get on. I think only swimmers who achieved the A standard should have been sent to Beijing. If Nocher and Cooney were selected on the basis of their B standard times, why was someone like Barry Murphy (who also achieved Olympic B standard in 50m freestyle) not picked? Surely if we want to show the world our best swimming talent we should wait until they are prepared 100% and the team behind them is organised 100%.

Either you are joking, or you don't have a clue what you are talking about.
Firstly, Barry was about half way between A and B. The others were much closer to A, Nocher made the A grade since then.
Barry is also 22 years old, so next time he is 26. His birthday is unforunate regarding olympics, but this was likely his best chance, and has one more max. He isn't the only one who made B times.
Cooney is only gone 18, she was training for 2012 in london, always has been. She was never planning on going to China, but she was allowed to go on a high B time as it would be a great training expierence. She was never going to take home medals (she held irish senior records at 17 remember). She has taken alot of her time in the last year, if she improves at any rate she will be a great contender in 4 years. Removing first time jitters now is a good thing.

PTG

Mellor wrote: »

Barry is also 22 years old, so next time he is 26. His birthday is unfortunate regarding olympics, but this was likely his best chance, and has one more max.

And you were doing so well until you said this! You are exactly right on everything else you said, but this is so far from true its kind of ridiculous. I'm not gonna get into the details, but pure sprinters, which Barry is, have a much longer life span than other swimmers. Mark Foster is in Beijing and swam his fastest ever 50 free at British trials, and he's 38. Gary Hall Jr. just missed the US team and hes 34. so to say when Barry is 26 that its his last chance "max" to go to a games is ridiculous

Mellor

PTG wrote: »

And you were doing so well until you said this! You are exactly right on everything else you said, but this is so far from true its kind of ridiculous. I'm not gonna get into the details, but pure sprinters, which Barry is, have a much longer life span than other swimmers. Mark Foster is in Beijing and swam his fastest ever 50 free at British trials, and he's 38. Gary Hall Jr. just missed the US team and hes 34. so to say when Barry is 26 that its his last chance "max" to go to a games is ridiculous

Its not a cash of physical ability, its mental, if he misses again in 2012, he will find it hard to keep trying. Maybe he can work past it, maybe not.
But his spot will become harder to get, younger swimmers coming up and all.

To be honest, your point above backs mine up,
even if I was wrong, and BM is determined enough to keep going until he is 38 in 2222. Thats great for him. If so it makes sense sending him only when he makes the A time, (I expect him to in 2012). But Cooney and Nocher don't have this timeframe. Sending them on a dry run is benefical for their training. Obviously it would of also been benefical for Murphy as it could hardly do harm. But I can see why the OCI limited it to three people (two swimmers).

cantalach

When you do the maths you see that roughly 2% was shaved off the WR in the 4x100 freestyle relay final. Am I the only person to wonder if training techniques and hydrodynamic swim suits have really improved by that much in the last year? Was the motivation of being dis'd by the French really that big? This is elite level after all, where we constantly hear that year on year improvements are measured in just small fractions of a percentage.

A freakishly talented Phelps or Thorpe will emerge every now and again, so you might just expect to see 2% being shaved off a WR in an individual event. But surely in a relay event you would expect the impact of such an individual to be smoothed out by the performances of the lesser team members (and in any case Phelps' leg in the 4x100 final wasn't all that fast, relatively speaking).

I'm a cyclist and I'll freely admit that I know pretty much nothing about swimming as a competitive sport (it's just something you do during the winter when taking time off from the bike ). But I can't help but think that if they shave 2% off the WR for the 4,000 m pursuit in the velodrome it will be treated with a lot more scepticism than the swimming.

toombah

Ah but the pool is 1 metre deeper. This, along with new swim suits, is more than likely causing 4 or so teams to be faster than the previous world record....
<tongue-in-cheek>

There are a fair few records being smashed alright. In the womens 100m backstroke I think the last 3 heats each set a new Olympic record. I'm sure the pool and suit do make a difference, I would hope that's it. However, the swimming has been amazing to watch.

Clseeper

What I'm more happy about is the publicity and promotion swimming is getting compared to a lot of events. For a relatively minority sport, the coverage is good. I’m not sure if this is due to Britain placing a lot of emphasise on their swimming team or RTE covering a lot aswell but every time I turn on the TV there seems to be swimming on.

el_tiddlero

the aquatics events are the main thing that happens in the first week of the olympics, so there's always a massive amount of coverage of them.
same way as all next week it'll be athletics getting all the coverage.

also, fairplay to Andrew Bree who made his semi-final today by breaking his own record..

MisterAnarchy

cantalach wrote: »

When you do the maths you see that roughly 2% was shaved off the WR in the 4x100 freestyle relay final. Am I the only person to wonder if training techniques and hydrodynamic swim suits have really improved by that much in the last year?

It does seem highly suspicious that so many world records are falling
The Speedo Lzr Racer has alot to do with it .
I'm all in favour of seeing fast times but this new swimsuit is making a mockery of the times.

Mellor

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

It does seem highly suspicious that so many world records are falling
The Speedo Lzr Racer has alot to do with it .
I'm all in favour of seeing fast times but this new swimsuit is making a mockery of the times.

Has the rate at which the records have been broken increased?

The records change all the time, for example, the irish 200m womens record has been broken 4 times this year (maybe a 5th at olympics)


Edit, I agree that the suit helps. obviously it does. But alot is down to the swimmer, Phelps doesn't wear a full suit for example.
And, it is no different that the advance made in other sports, do you think sprinters would of went sub-10 sec if shoes didnt improve and they were still in the clothes of the 1908 olympics.
Stickign with swimming, what about hats and googles etc. Did they not help times.


To be truely fair, all sports should be competed a la "Ancient Greece"

sock puppet

I think the reason that the 4x100 relay record has fallen by so much is because the US team for the first time since Gary Hall Jr, finally has some sprinters who could be considered the best in the world. Before this team has won relays because of their depth whereas individually they probably wouldn't have even made finals. The US have had very little success in the 100m free in recent years. But I'd guess that if this team were all able to compete individually they'd have 3 finallists. As it is I think they'll have both Lezak and Gale in the final with a possible gold for Lezak.

I wouldn't really be suspicous. The big improvements came mostly from Phelps and Lezak. Though Lezak has lowered his time hugely in the past year I think it's just him peaking in time for the olympics. Almost every other swimmer has done the same.

walshb

The records are also tumbling because the pool dimensions are new and different
from previous meets

juvenal

Andrew Bree just swam another new Irish record of 2:10.16 coming 5th in the semis of the 200m breaststroke. Kitijima won in an Olympic record.

Xavi6

Yeah Bree only missed out on a final spot by 0.2 of a second. Very unlucky.

juvenal

Phelps just went 2-for-2 this morning and now has five golds. It doesn't look like he'll fail in the quest for eight now.

minxie

ive just seen him win another, bloody amazing...

sock puppet

juvenal wrote: »

Phelps just went 2-for-2 this morning and now has five golds. It doesn't look like he'll fail in the quest for eight now.

Depends. He could lose the 100m fly. Crocker has beaten him before and still holds the world record though he hasn't been in top form lately and lost to Phelps at the US trials. I still expect Phelps to win and break his world record but Crocker is still a threat. Although I did predict two American finalists and one medalist for the 100m free and it doesn't look like that's gonna happen so I could be wrong again:D

Did anyone here notice the poor swims in the semis of the 100m free by Gilot and Gale. Even Lezak was nowhere near his split. They must have really swam out of their skins for the relay. I think Bernard will win it, Sullivan will come second and between Van Hoogenband and Nystrand for 4th.

Mellor

considering lezak's split was a second faster than the new world record, he was never getting close

FatherTed

BTW I saw Phelps interviewed on US tv after the 200 fly and he complained that he had trouble with his goggles, water leaked in. But he still won and set the WR.

Trippie

phelps might lose the team 100 medley as he is relying on the others around him and hansen for example is well off the boil which means they will have some ground to make up and considering the free was so close this may be the event he doesnt win

PTG

Trippie wrote: »

phelps might lose the team 100 medley as he is relying on the others around him and hansen for example is well off the boil which means they will have some ground to make up and considering the free was so close this may be the event he doesnt win

Oh dear, your lack of knowledge is worrying, America have the fastest backstroker in the world in Peirsol, the only swimmers anywhere near him are his own teammates.

Taking the breastroke leg out of the equation for the moment, assuming Phelps is one team for the final, he will get a gold medal regardless as he will swim the heats just in case) hes the second fastest 100 flyer EVER again only beaten by his teammate and its quite possible he will hold that world record by the time it comes around, his sprinting has improved to the point where he is now the 3rd fastest 100 freestyler of all time.

Lezak has THE fastest 100 freestyle split of all time.

Now while Hansen may be off the boil by his own incredible standards he was only .6 or so off winning the 100 breastroke so lets for argument sake say that the three guys that beat him are even swimming the relays;

Kitajima - is there 3 other Japanese guys that can match up to the US?

Oen - no norwegian relay team.

Dubosq - again is there three French guys to match the US? maybe on the free leg but back and fly? NO


The only thing that will stop that US team from winning is themselves if they DQ, so yes while he is dependent on the others to win WITH him, its not for the reason your suggesting

sock puppet

Yep the French should do well on the freestyle and breaststroke legs and they'll be competitive enough on the butterfly leg. Bousquet isn't much slower than Phelps or Crocker. The problem for them is that they are going to be absolutely destroyed on the backstroke leg. Their weakness here will kill them. I think it may even cause them to miss out on a medal to someone like Russia or Britain. It's quite a shame for them as if they had a decent backstroker they could have really pushed the US.

So Kitajima looks to be on to defend his double tonight. A truly amazing swimmer. Also proves that you don't have to be some 6ft 6 freak of nature to be a top class swimmer. I was just reading there that he's only a little taller than Katie Hoff or Stephanie Rice. He looks tiny on the blocks when standing beside some of the bigger lads.

Also how crushing must today have been for the british womens 4x200 relay team. Finishing 9th in the heats after resting 2 top swimmers. Seems like a very bad mistake. Surely the coaches would have known that the race was going to be tight.

And China are in with a good chance of winning their first gold medal in swimming this olympics in the womens 200 fly. Schipper will most likely take it but they have 2 swimmers in on times near Schipper's world record. They could even pick up two medals.

Xavi6

Alian Bernard has just held off Eamonn Sullivan to win the 100m freestyle.

Bernard - 47.21 secs
Sullivan - 47.32 secs

Pieter van den Hoogenband came fifth

juvenal

Xavi6 wrote: »

Alian Bernard has just held off Eamonn Sullivan to win the 100m freestyle.

Bernard - 47.21 secs
Sullivan - 47.32 secs

Pieter van den Hoogenband came fifth

Cracking race, van den Hoogenband was aiming for his third Olympic gold at this event, I think his age showed against the two young 'uns

I felt sorry for the French after Lezak overtook Bernard on the last 50m in the relay, so fair play to him for bouncing back after than disappointment. Him and Sullivan have been trading the world record the past few days, and I reckon Sullivan will win gold in the 50m free.

Lezak got joint third, it's his first individual Olympic medal.

hussey

Did you see the size of that french guy .. wow he is HUGE!

talk about sour grapes, after the Eamo Sullivan lost, everyone was saying the french guy must be on drugs. They really hate to lose.

minxie

sullivan didnt even look his way...
was a bad loser......

Xavi6

Yeah it is funny. If anyone's on drugs it's Stephanie Rice. Her PB's have fallen ridiculosly in the run up to the Games. In the space of a year her times for the 400m have gone from 4mins 40secs to below 4mins 30secs. Won't see her scrutinised though.

juvenal

hussey wrote: »

Did you see the size of that french guy .. wow he is HUGE!

talk about sour grapes, after the Eamo Sullivan lost, everyone was saying the french guy must be on drugs. They really hate to lose.

minxie1 wrote: »

sullivan didnt even look his way...
was a bad loser......

I noticed that Sullivan seemed as if he was going to make a quick token "well-done" but some other swimmer swam over to congratulate Bernard and Sullivan then seemed not to bother.

Should make more of an effort tbh, he ends up just looking like a [EMAIL="tw@t"]tw@t[/EMAIL].

Xavi6 wrote:

Yeah it is funny. If anyone's on drugs it's Stephanie Rice. Her PB's have fallen ridiculosly in the run up to the Games. In the space of a year her times for the 400m have gone from 4mins 40secs to below 4mins 30secs. Won't see her scrutinised though

I know most of the Aussie swimmers from the Olympics and the World Champs that were on while I was in Melb, but this chick just seems to come out of nowhere. She has three golds now - fair play but also kinda random. If she was Chinese there'd be uproar!:D

sock puppet

Xavi6 wrote: »

Yeah it is funny. If anyone's on drugs it's Stephanie Rice. Her PB's have fallen ridiculosly in the run up to the Games. In the space of a year her times for the 400m have gone from 4mins 40secs to below 4mins 30secs. Won't see her scrutinised though.

Ye but she's hot whereas people see Bernard's size and automatically think "oh he must be on drugs". Or maybe just maybe it's possible that all of his training is geared specifically towards the 50 and 100m freestyle and that is what gives him his huge frame. Sucks for him but that's how your average viewer sees it. I think the fact that he's French also works against him. A lot of people really don't like him for some reason.

I'm not sure about Rice. I mean she's young enough that these improvements could be possible so I'd give her the benefit of the doubt. Andrew Bree dropped 3 seconds off his 200 time so a 10 second drop in the 400 is doable. Btw the races between her, Hoff and Coventry have been really entertaining.

Xavi6

And Phelps wins number 6 in a new World Record time of 1 minute 54.23 seconds.

2 to go!

eagle eye

The 100 butterfly will be interesting, Cavic was really cocky after beating him in the semi, it was funny but he definitely put it up to Phelps to show his best which might not be the best tactic.

As for swimmers and performance enhancing drugs mentioned above somewhere, FINA are terrible at tracking this sort of thing. With the amount of successful multi eventing going all I can say is hmmmmm.

sock puppet

eagle eye wrote: »

The 100 butterfly will be interesting, Cavic was really cocky after beating him in the semi, it was funny but he definitely put it up to Phelps to show his best which might not be the best tactic.

As for swimmers and performance enhancing drugs mentioned above somewhere, FINA are terrible at tracking this sort of thing. With the amount of successful multi eventing going all I can say is hmmmmm.

Well Phelps' time was a bit off his best. I don't know how much faster if at all Cavic can go.

I wouldn't be worried about the number of events swam. In smaller competitions swimmers could be doing 3-4 events in 1 day so doing 1 event a day is possible for these guys. Plus when you look at someone like Phelps or Rice or Hoff you'll notice they only push it really in the finals. That's not to say no one is on drugs just that you can't tell by the number of events competed in.

juvenal

And Michael Phelps does it - 7 Golds

He was 7th at the turn and second until the final fingernail, winning in 0.01 of a second!

I still can't believe Cavic lost it, he led all the way and made a bit of a bóllix of his stroke ending, with Phelps out-reaching him at the death. It was great to see a close race, but in a way I'm sorry he (Cavic) didn't hang on. I think I'm a little bitter having to watch NBC here where it's the Michael Phelps Olympics (not his fault obviously - a great athlete and fantastic achievement and seems like a very down-to-earth guy).

OT - Armchair fans are running the show, the IOC should hang their heads in shame letting NBC dictate the schedule and braodcast policy for Beijing :mad:

Kirsty Coventry won the 200m women's backstroke - great performance and her first gold of these Olympics

GB's golden girl Rebecca Adlington absolutely crushed the field, and the longest standing world record in swimming set by Janet Evans in 1989, to win the 800m women's free. Apparently her parents were the victims of a ticket scam and had to watch her first gold from the living room in England, but someone got their act together and sorted them out and they were there to see it. Fantastic.

Cesar Cielo Filho won the 'splash & dash' 50m free and Brazil's first ever swimming medal. Two Frenchmen, Leveaux and Bernard took the silver and bronze. WR holder Eamon Sullivan came in sixth.

juvenal

According to reports the Serbian team tried to appeal the result of the 100m 'fly on the basis of a faulty sensor, but it was refused after a review of the overhead cameras. It was so close I doubt the naked eye or even a camera from any sort of a distance could tell them apart.

Meanwhile, word of a protest seeped into public knowledge and the Serbian staff did question the result, but FINA took the video to a 10,000th of a second and there were a number of frames that provided definitive proof as to the winner.

Lirange

Underwater slow motion camera captures how Phelps got him.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=12409893&postcount=10891

They both looked to be in between strokes coming into the wall. Phelps decided to take an additional stroke and Cavic decided to stretch for the wall.

juvenal

This morning's action is building up to the last event in the Water Cube, the 4x100m mens medley relay.

Grant Hackett got silver in the 1500m mens free, gold went to Oussama Mellouli from Tunisia. German Britta Steffen wins gold in the 50m free by another 0.01s, from US 41 year-old Dara Torres.

The Australian ladies smashed the world record and held off the Americans to win the 4x100m medley.

The US medley relay team go against Australia for the last medals of the indoor swimming, with Phelps going to gold #8.

The US team has just won the medley relay, with Australia taking second and Japan third. Michael Phelps wins his 8th gold medal at these Olympics

On a side note, German Britta Steffen was the first swimmer to win a gold at these Olympics not wearing the new Speedo suit.

the-island-man

Michael Phelp's person of the Olympics by far!:)

onehorse

How much is that swimsuit to buy? Pity the swimming has come to an end

sock puppet

onehorse wrote: »

How much is that swimsuit to buy? Pity the swimming has come to an end

There going to be released in about early November I think. I'm not sure what the availability is going to be like so it could be later than that by the time you can get it. Off swimshop the full body suit is about 400 euro and the legs, the ones Phelps wore during his the butterfly, are about 270 euro. Personally I don't think they're worth it unless your an international swimmer. A lower quality legskin would cost about 150 euro less. The LZR would probably knock maybe an extra quarter of a second off your times over a 50 if even over another skin. On a side note I wonder how many people will be wearing them come nationals.