His performance was absolutely stunning!!
Michael Phelps just won his first Gold Medal of the Beijing Games in the 400 IM. Oh yeah, he also set a new World Record.
Bob Green
His performance was absolutely stunning!!
Cool to see Korea and China get their first men's swimming medals in the 400 free. Glad an American was in there too!
On the medals podium for Phelps, the anthem started off wrong (they missed a few opening bars), then they cut the last portion (I believe right after "banner yet").
MIGHT want to get that corrected.
Cheers,
Lavabe
I'm looking forward to watching 3 people. 2, I swam with before I quit 4 years ago - Kate Ziegler (400/800 free) and Chloe Sutton (10k open water). Just 2 great, really nice people to talk to when I was at the late night/early morning 1500 free swimming marathons at meets. The other is Ryan Lochte. I really hope he wins a gold. He's extremely talented, but is overshadowed by Michael Phelps and Aaron Piersol in his 2 events.
I've heard that The Cube is supposed to be a ridiculously fast pool. Now, showing my ignorance here, what exactly makes a pool fast? Why are more records set in one pool vs another?
(I ask this question setting the Lazer suit issue aside.)
basically, the better a pool deflects waves away from the swimmers, the faster it is. in old pools, the waves a swimmer would generate would hit the bottom and bounce right back into the swimmer or hit the sides of the pool and then hit the swimmer (both of which slower the swimmer down). the better you can reduce these waves, the faster the pool is. if you have swim in a 3 foot deep pool and then a water polo pool (a deep one), you can easily feel the difference.
not that it applies to olympic pools, because all of them are 50m, but the shorter the pool is, the faster it is due to the fact that more of the swim is comprised of the speed generated from pushing off the wall. thus, you can swim faster in a 25yd pool than a 50m pool.
Great performances on tonight's coverage.
Without giving away the results, Cris Collinsworth sitting next to Phelps' mom is one of the better moves by NBC.
Tonight: two incredible Phelps races, and a couple of great women's races.
Tuesday night coverage includes a Phelps final, and a Phelps relay (IIRC 4 x 200m free).
dukie8: MAJOR kudos to Phelps with that move to the French. It should be interesting to see the reactions and performances in the next relay.
Cheers,
Lavabe
Last edited by Lavabe; 08-12-2008 at 12:01 AM. Reason: IIRC
A lot of it is mental. The pool is absolutely beautiful, and its inaugural meet is the Olympics. You have to come into that situation just expecting to blow away your personal bests.
I can only imagine what it must have felt like to hit the water on the first day of practice there after the team arrived in China.
I always felt faster in a cold pool. Warm pools made it feel like I was swimming through mush.
the npr was doing a segment on the water cube. Apparently, the minimum requirement for the depth of a pool is 2m, while the water cube pool is 3m, which better dampens the wave, just as explained several posts above. Also, the lane on both sides of the pool is not used in the competition, supposedly also contributing to lessening wave effect. Anyway, water cube has to be the fastest pool now. This, and plus the new speedo suit, almost every swimming record is being broken. It's crazy.
Is there any other sport where records are so subject to the environment of competition? Is every Olympic venue in the future going to build slightly deeper and wider pools so that new records can be set?
IMHO, it devalues the notion of a record somewhat since you can't make apples to apples comparisons between venues.
The dimensions of the Water Cube aren't that different from American facilities that host national championship-calibur meets.
I can't think of very many that aren't at least 8 feet deep without a taper (Clovis comes to mind), and the extra lanes on the outside have become common in newer facilites (even older high-end facilities have greatly wider outside lanes to accomodate lane lines and a well on either side).