It was fun to watch Susan von der Lippe swim the 100 fly in prelims. She moved up in the field roughly 30 places and finished 105 out of 137 to the best of my memory. I talked to her afterwards (she was hanging out at the motel pool with her kids and husband) and she thought it might have been close to her lifetime best (= her qualifying time) since she didn't swim much fly as a kid. Let's see what she can do today in the 100 ***.
Great to see world records in the first two final events. With all the records falling this year, I was not surprised to see two under the WR in the men's 400 IM - I'm betting this will happen more than once this year.
For me, the most exciting race was the 400 free. Great swims by the top four swimmers!
Also nice to see some swimmers move way up in the fields with some big time drops. Over 12,000 in the audience for both the prelims and finals yesterday. It took a while for the crowd to figure out how to cheer for people swimming breaststroke...
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Ho hum, more world records. What a great night last night. Best for me, of course, was seeing an old person win the women's 100 free. Grace and I are looking around for someone swimming to adopt us as surrogate parents and both Dara Torres and Susan von der Lippe are about the right age. We had breakfast with Susan yesterday morning but forgot to ask. Also interesting to hear John Naber interview Jessica Hardy after the 100 free and her possible selection for the 4 X 100 relay. Naber: we don't think of you as a freestyler. Hardy: I don't either but, hey...
I was also glad to see Amanda slip into the 200 BR, showing that other parts of her life have not been so much of a distraction as some of might have guessed (and my previous thoughts about always swimming with her elbows out of the water on the recovery). Also hadn't noticed before that Rebecca Soni has the shortest arm stroke of any breaststroker I've ever watched in person. Her pull is not a scull, as far as I can tell, but just a quick downward pull of the forearms and then, boom, recovery. She also stays pretty low in the water.
Some of the new (to me) faces and names are remarkable. I'm thinking Elizabeth Beisel is a real superstar. Man can that girl swim. It also looks like Bobby Bollier may do quite a bit of damage in the future. We liked to see hometown 14-year-old Bonnie Brandon from Aurora Colorado (seeded 47th) make it into the semis in the 200 backstroke. Rich Abrahams told me that she has dropped about 5 seconds in the last month.
Don't know if viewers at home can tell but the ones getting the biggest applause last night were Dara Torres, Michael Phelps, Aaron Peirsol, Ryan Lochte, Cullen Jones, Gary Hall and Amanda Beard. The crowd really likes the more seasoned veterans.
Smith fact of the day: I was always suspicious that Paul Smith fabricated stories about his college swimming. However, I have seen a number of Gaucho swimmers at the meet and have to concede, at least, that there is a swim program at UCSB.
Finally, one of the cameramen gave me a copy of the USA Swimming media guides. What a wealth of information! This is what serious swim fans need to have access to at the meet.
Ho hum, more world records. What a great night last night. Best for me, of course, was seeing an old person win the women's 100 free. Grace and I are looking around for someone swimming to adopt us as surrogate parents and both Dara Torres and Susan von der Lippe are about the right age. We had breakfast with Susan yesterday morning but forgot to ask. Also interesting to hear John Naber interview Jessica Hardy after the 100 free and her possible selection for the 4 X 100 relay. Naber: we don't think of you as a freestyler. Hardy: I don't either but, hey...
I was also glad to see Amanda slip into the 200 BR, showing that other parts of her life have not been so much of a distraction as some of might have guessed (and my previous thoughts about always swimming with her elbows out of the water on the recovery). Also hadn't noticed before that Rebecca Soni has the shortest arm stroke of any breaststroker I've ever watched in person. Her pull is not a scull, as far as I can tell, but just a quick downward pull of the forearms and then, boom, recovery. She also stays pretty low in the water.
Some of the new (to me) faces and names are remarkable. I'm thinking Elizabeth Beisel is a real superstar. Man can that girl swim. It also looks like Bobby Bollier may do quite a bit of damage in the future. We liked to see hometown 14-year-old Bonnie Brandon from Aurora Colorado (seeded 47th) make it into the semis in the 200 backstroke. Rich Abrahams told me that she has dropped about 5 seconds in the last month.
Don't know if viewers at home can tell but the ones getting the biggest applause last night were Dara Torres, Michael Phelps, Aaron Peirsol, Ryan Lochte, Cullen Jones, Gary Hall and Amanda Beard. The crowd really likes the more seasoned veterans.
Smith fact of the day: I was always suspicious that Paul Smith fabricated stories about his college swimming. However, I have seen a number of Gaucho swimmers at the meet and have to concede, at least, that there is a swim program at UCSB.
Finally, one of the cameramen gave me a copy of the USA Swimming media guides. What a wealth of information! This is what serious swim fans need to have access to at the meet.
