I just read that the men's 200 MR was DQd at Worlds. That race could've given Phelps a record 8th gold medal... bummer.
Phelps was very gracious about it. He said, "We came in here as a team, we exit as a team."
Sigh.
PS Did you see the size of his HANDS! I would like to swim just one race with hands his size, and feet the size of Thorpe's. (Yep, I have puny little paws!)
Ok, what about Phelps failure to make the 400 freestyle final at the 2005 world's? He was leading the race in his PRELIM hit and got passed by a number of swimmers.
Get off Crocker's back. He made a mistake in his job. How many people here have never made a mistake in their job????
Now that I riled some of you up, here are my thoughts.
My coaches always told us not to push the starts on the prelims of a relay you know you are going to win. Granted we were not going for world records.
The US was seated 3.5 seconds ahead of the field. Everyone in the pool knew the only way the US could lose was to deeq. To get perspective, each swimmer could have stood up there on the block for a half second between swimmers before diving in, and they still would have won the relay. Their seed time still ended up being more than 3 seconds faster than the gold medal winning team, as everyone in the pool expected.
Knowing that the meet was in the bag for the US in terms of medal totals, if coach told them to go for the world record in the prelims and not worry about the finals, then the edgy start and subsequent deeq is a bit more justifiable. However, my bet is that they all could have had relatively safe starts, definetly got the gold, and probably still broke the world record. To me, it just seems far too risky to go for it all in the prelims. A gold medal at the Worlds is still an acheivement of a lifetime, world record or not. I never coached though.
Coaches comments?
I think there is an obvious conspiracy theory here: Japanese breastroker Kitajima, the renowned foil of US Swimming is still burned at the disrespect he has received, even in light of winning the 200 ***, so he approaches the French media (root of all conspiracy theories) and they hatch a plan: How best can we rain on the US parade:- answer: prevent Phelps from attaining his coveted 8th gold medal. With the help of an unnamed cyborg of extragalactic origin, they obtain an invisible pea shooter able to function in accuracies of milliseconds. At the appropriate moment the fateful pea is shot into Crocker's gluteaus maximus and a historic moment is prevented. Kitajima twirls his sideburns (lacking a mustache) and dolphin kicks insolently during warm-downs.
Last time I checked all of the swimmers we are discussing here were actually PEOPLE, people! For crying out loud, everybody makes mistakes from time to time. Sure, a race was lost and Phelps opportunity to win 8 Golds was foiled but in the end nobody was maimed or killed. The meet was an overwhelming success for the United States. I say give the guy a break...unless of course, any of you could have done any better.
It almost looks to me like somebody through a gauntlet down between the 2 teams. The ones on the Pre-lim team were going for a WR and then seeing if the Finals team could beat it......because normally you don't take a chance like that during pre-lims unless you are going for a record!
Just a thought!
Geez - the dude made a mistake, we all have false started in our lives. It's not the end of the world or anyone's career. Never seen such whining about a false start.
I hardly think a false start in an athletic competition qualifies as a huge mistake. I would guess that when it's all said and done, if that's the worst mistake Crocker makes in his life, he'll feel pretty good about it. I mean, it's not like driving a big SUV while hammered.
Lefty made a good point and us lefties need to stick together.
Crocker made a huge and silly mistake.
I can't believe this thread has gone on for so long. I think Geek is right. I certainly can't say that I have never false started in my life. We are not robots. Swimmers make all kinds of mistakes during races and jumping on a relay is just one example. Costly, yes. Bad timing at Worlds, yes. I don't think anyone was suggesting Crocker "lay down" for Phelps (or Peirsol or Hansen). Just seemed more sensible to be cautious in the prelims so they could all collect gold after the finals. Most US relay teams are not gunning for WRs in prelims anyway. But things didn't go as planned. That's life. Life isn't always fair. I think we should all think of Crocker as the reigning world record holder, not some guy who cost Phelps his 8th medal.
