Congratulations to Elaine Breeden!!!

As a recap of the race, which you can watch here¹, the winner of the 100m butterfly in the 2004 Olympic trials, Rachel Komisarz, jumped out to an early lead out of the start. The favorite, Christine Magnuson, recent graduate of Tennessee, caught up with her and made it a two person race for most of the race. Coming out of the turn from the 50, Elaine Breeden (pictured) was fighting for fouth place. As the swimmers made it to the 75 meter mark, the field was tightening up, and as they went under the flags, it looked like Rachel and Christine were going to punch their tickets to Beijing. However, as the swimmers came into the wall, Elaine pulled enough to reach the wall 0.16 seconds ahead of Komisarz to place second behind Magnuson.

Congratulations to Elaine (and Christine) for making their first Olympics with this event, and we'll be looking forward to seeing her in China. As a note, we won't be in China during the 100m butterfly (the finals which will be shown here in the US on NBC during prime time on Sunday, August 10). Anyway, I'll keep you posted on more happenings at trials throughout the rest of the week.


1. note: works best with Safari over Firefox 3. It requires the installation of Microsoft Silverlight software to work.

Trials Update

Wow...lots of news to cover. First off, the finals are set for the 100m butterfly, and I couldn't be happier with the way it's turned out! In addition, two world records were set at the trials, both in the 400m IM. One was in the men's set by none other than Michael Phelps, and the other in the women's by 19-year-old Katie Hoff. Brendan Hansen blazed through the semifinals of the 100m breastroke, recording the second fastest time ever swum in that event. Kudos to him for that effort.

On the track and field side of things, there were several upsets at the trials, which may turn out to be detrimental to American medal chances. Jeremy Wariner easily won his quarterfinal event in the 400m dash (an event that is an American powerhouse, and perhaps the most likely event for the Americans to go 1-2-3, as they did in 2004. As an aside, I'd really like to see an event where the Americans sweep the medals, and watch as the three American flags rise with "The Star Spangled Banner" playing).

However, the news of the day was Lexington native Tyson Gay, who ran the 100m dash in 9.68 seconds. The 4.1 m/s tailwind denied him the world record (which is 9.72 seconds, set this year by Usain Bolt), but no man has ever run the 100m dash that fast, even with a tailwind. He will be heading to the Olympics as America's best hope to capture gold against the two Jamaicans, Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell.

Anyway, the finals for the 100m butterfly are on tomorrow night on USA, NBC's cable affiliate, from 8pm to 9pm live from Omaha. Brendan Hansen will also be competing to cement his spot on the Olympic team in the 100m breastroke, an event where he owns the world record. Michael Phelps does not have any finals tomorrow, but he does have two prelims and two semifinals (the 200 freestyle and the 100 back). The finals for those events will be on Tuesday.

I'll probably have daily updates on trials, and when we get past trials in the time right before the Olympics, I'll post a couple blogs on the Speedo LZR that's been in the news, a bit of Olympic history, and a preview of China and Beijing.

Olympic Trials

Today is Day 1 of the Swimming Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska. I'll post updates when finals results come in, but here are just a couple websites for those of you who want to keep track of the trials. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday(s), the evening events will be shown on NBC. During the week, the evening events will be shown on USA. The morning events will all be broadcast live online here.(the feed had issues with Firefox 3, but on Safari it worked fine). If you want to see the results, go here.

The events I'm paying special attention to are the women's 100m and 200m butterfly, men's 200m breaststroke, women's 100m freestyle, men's 200m backstroke, men's 100m freestyle, women's 200m breastroke, and men's 200m IM (the events that my friend is going in, as well as the events we'll be seeing at the Olympics).

I'll post results later on.

Final cut...

My posts are almost never short, but even so, this one will be short. I guarantee it. It's actually slightly out of date, and I apologize--I've been on vacation away from the internet so blogging wasn't high on the priority list. Anyway, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) narrowed down the list of possible candidate cities for the 2016 Olympic games to 4 cities.

• Rio de Janiero, Brazil: the Olympics have never been held in South America, and Rio showed it can hold a major sporting event by holding the Pan-American Games last summer
• Tokyo, Japan: in narrowing down the cities, Tokyo had the highest technical score. It may be hard to convince the IOC to bring the Games back to Asia for the second time in three Olympics
• Madrid, Spain: They went for a bid for the 2012 games, but lost to London. Like Tokyo, they may have trouble bringing the Olympics to Europe twice in a row
• Chicago, United States: Our hope for the 2016 games. It'll be 20 years since the last time the Olympics were in the US (Atlanta 1996), but Chicago has some major hurdles to get over

Now, for the teams that were dropped:

• Doha, Qatar: the Olympics have never been to the Middle East, and won't be until at least 2020 (for which Dubai and Doha will contend). Doha wanted to hold the games in October to avoid the desert heat, but the IOC thought that was too big of a change.
• Baku, Azerbaijan: This resort city on the Black Sea was a longshot at best. They may try for the games in 2020 or 2024
• Prague, Czech Republic: Another longshot, but this was partly in preparation for a later bid

Event updates

It's been about two weeks since my last blog, so I though I'd take this time to go through some of the recent developments with regards to the events that we'll be seeing in particular.

As many of you may know, the world record in the 100m dash was broken several days ago by Jamaican Usain Bolt, previously held by countryman Asafa Powell. It's not even his best event--so much so that he wasn't even sure if he'd be running it in Beijing! The American hopes most likely will rest on former Lafayette HS (Lexington, KY) and Arkansas standout Tyson Gay, who won gold at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka. The other American standout, Justin Gatlin, will be serving a four-year drug suspension in lieu of going to Beijing. We'll see if the Americans can retain the gold medal in Beijing.

As for rowing, I should point you to a recent article in the New York Times regarding China's newfound love of rowing. Rowing is a sport with a lot of medals available (14 events for a total of 42 medals), so the Chinese look to cash in on the gold there (they did not place in any rowing event in Athens). In 2004 the Americans won two medals: one gold and one silver. We will see the Men's eight--America's lone gold medal in Athens--and we will hope that the Americans can defend their title.

The Olympic Trials in swimming are June 29 to July 6 in Omaha, Nebraska. Coincidentally, Omaha is also the location of the College World Series just the week before (which we all hope produces a national championship for Rice). Superstar Michael Phelps looks to accomplish everything he left unaccomplished in Athens. That is, breaking Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals at a single Olympics (apparently six golds and two bronzes were not enough for Mr. Phelps). In any case, we will (hopefully) see him in one of his preliminary events. America should return to Beijing with a strong team with the likes of Phelps, Natalie Coughlin, Brendan Hansen and Katie Hoff.

Finally, for triathlon, Julie Swail Ertel and Laura Bennett are slated to compete in the women's triathlon (with nods to Jarrod Schumacher and Matt Reed for the men). The final member of the each team will be determined at the Hy-Vee Triathlon on June 22. Unfortunately for the men's team, only one of the top two Americans, Andy Potts and Hunter Kemper, will be able to go to Beijing. In any case, we will see how the Americans do, and whether they can reach the medal stand.

In a little over a month, the Olympic teams will be complete, and we will know who will be competing for Olympic gold (and conversely, who will not be competing). As of writing, I will be leaving for Beijing in 69 and a half days (not that I'm counting or anything!).