The Olympic Trials in Review

So here's a list of my top 10 events that occurred at this year's Olympic Trials:

1. Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff: Each had five chances to make it to Beijing. Each succeeded in all 5. Phelps will go for 8 golds (including three relays), and leaves Omaha undefeated in all his races. Hoffwill compete for 6 golds, and is the "female Phelps".
   
2. Dara Torres: at 41, setting an American record and qualifying in 2 events as the oldest swimmer to make the US Olympic team
   
3. Tyson Gay (1): He ran the fastest (wind-aided) 100m dash in history at 9.68 seconds
4. Brendan Hansen: A month ago, Hansen was the world record in the 200m breastroke until Kosuke Kitajima took it away. Hansen wound up 4th in this event, and will have one shot at Olympic gold in the 100
   
5. Tyson Gay (2): Unfortunately, the world champion in the 200m dash isn't going to be competing for a medal in that event, since he fell during the quarterfinals of the 200m dash and strained his hamstring
   
6. Cullen Jones: is the first fully African-American to make the US Olympic Team in a long white-dominated sport. Perhaps we'll see the first African-American president this year too.
   
7. Aaron Piersol: The Texan backstroker set one world record and tied another in his two events to lock up those two events in Beijing. There's no doubt
   
8. Jeremy Wariner: Heavily favored to win, he placed second in the finals of the 400m dash. He will, however, make the Olympic team and look to break Michael Johnson's record in that race.
   
9. Gary Hall, Jr.: One of the most interesting swimming figures, missed the Olympics completely after not placing in the top two in the 5om freestyle.
   
10. Elaine Breeden: For me, this is easily the biggest event (and so a good one to end on), since she qualified in both the 100m and 200m butterfly

I'm biased, and lots of other great stuff happened. Both the Track and Field and the Swimming teams for the United States look very strong headed to Beijing, and despite a couple setbacks, we should do very well in the premier sports of the Games. It's going to be awesome!

The final weekend of Olympic Trials

Well, here are a few notes regarding the Olympic Trials. First, if you've missed it all week, it's going to be shown live tonight on NBC from 5pm to 6pm (Track and Field) and from 8pm to 9pm (Swimming). Tonight will feature the finals of the men's 50m freestyle, the finals of the men's 100m butterfly (Michael Phelps' last race of the trials), the semifinals of the women's 50m freestyle, the finals of the women's 200m backstroke and the finals of the women's 800 freestyle.

Last night was quite a spectacle at Trials. Michael Phelps set the world record in the finals of the men's 200m IM, with Ryan Lochte swimming a close second less than a half hour after getting out-touched at the wall by Aaron Piersol in the 200m backstroke. "Out-touched" is perhaps a misnomer, since Piersol beat Lochte by 0.02 seconds. Piersol tied the world record in that event--the world record also held by Ryan Lochte. Dara Torres took second place in the women's 100m freestyle. It will be her fifth Olympics, which is incredible to begin with. However, it's even more incredible when you consider that she's skipped two Olympics since her first Olympics in 1984 (the 1996 games in Atlanta and the 2004 games in Athens). She is 41 years old (with a 2-year-old daughter as well). The word "supermom" takes a whole new meaning.

It's been a fantastic week watching the Olympic Trials (especially for me!), and it looks like the United States will bring a very strong contingent of athletes to Beijing in swimming, led by the versatile swimmers Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Katie Hoff, and Natalie Coughlin.

In other (non-Olympic) sports news, the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, met in the ladies' finals of Wimbledon, with Venus winning the first two sets to claim the match and her fifth win at Wimbledon. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal play tomorrow for the gentlemen's title. Also, the Tour de France starts today.

Anyway, I may have one more post about Olympic Trials, but in the next month before the Olympics start, I'll try to keep this blog updated with interesting tidbits about the Olympics, Beijing, and the United States Olympic Team.

UPDATE Tyson Gay, the defending world champion in the 200m dash, will not be going to Beijing in that event. He went down running in the quarterfinals of that event after suffering what looks to be a severe cramp. He has already qualified in the 100m dash, but the severity of the injury is not known, and it's possible he might not make it to Beijing. However, at this point, that doesn't look likely.

Day 5 at the Olympic Trials

Well, tonight is the fifth night of the Olympic trials, and the night that Elaine will try to secure her second spot on the United States Olympic team. Standing in her way will be Mary Descensa, Kathleen Hersey, and Kim Vandenburg, all very capable swimmers. I'll be updating this blog throughout the evening, so stay tuned. Elaine's event will be broadcast live on USA, or you can watch it online. This link will have the video posted at 8pm eastern.

As a recap, earlier today Michael Phelps placed second overall in the prelims of the 200 IM, an event that he holds the world record in. Rebecca Soni recorded the top time in the 200m breastroke, and 3-time Olympian Amanda Beard placed third. The semifinals for both events will be tonight, and the finals tomorrow night. The finals for the 100m freestyle will also be tonight, as will the finals for the men's 200m breastroke, featuring Brendan Hansen, who will try to take back Kosuke Kitajima's month-old world record. In any case, tonight should be a good night for swimming!

UPDATE Congratulations to Elaine Breeden!! She won the 200m butterfly, and will be heading to Beijing in three events--both the 100m and 200m butterfly as well as the 4x100 medley relay. In other updates, Lochte and Piersol look to be going strong for the 200 backstroke tomorrow night. Lochte is also going against Phelps in the 200 IM, both of whom easily won their semifinal heats. Cullen Jones, the first African-American to hold a world record, qualified for the 4x100 freestyle relay. Dara Torres moved to the finals with one of the top times in the 100m freestyle with her old school underwater technique. The shocker of the night was Brendan Hansen, the world record holder a month ago in the 200m breastroke, missing out on the Olympics in that event. Assuredly, the Japanese are celebrating, as Hansen is the biggest threat to Kitajima bringing home gold in the 200m breaststroke.

In any case, it looks like we've got a swimming schedule chock full of great events, from the semifinals of the men's 200m IM, the finals of the men's 100m freestyle, the finals of the women's 200m butterfly, and the 4x200 women's freestyle relay. It looks like it'll be a great trip!!!

Day 4 of the Olympic Trials

Well, we've seen a solid start to the morning prelims in Omaha. In the men's 100m freestyle, one of the toughest events of the competition, Jason Lezak set the American record in his heat. Garrett Weber-Gale followed in the next heat by resetting the American record. In the next and final heat, Michael Phelps was 0.14 seconds away from Weber-Gale's record. Quite a start! Phelps' coach said that he won't be swimming in the semifinals tonight in order to focus on the finals of the 200m butterfly.

The next race, the prelims of the women's 200m butterfly, saw a very fast set of results, as the cutoff for the semifinals was at 2:12:58. Elaine Breeden had the fastest time of the field with 2:07:72, besting Tanya Chrisman's second place time by a full 1.26 seconds. To view the prelims of future events, go here. Tonight the semifinals of this event will be broadcast simultaneously on USA and online. I'll try to post the link to the live video feed as soon as it's up. In addition to finals in the men's 200 butterfly, the semifinals of the women's 200 butterfly, Brendan Hansen will swim in the semifinals of the 200 breastroke, with the finals Thursday night.

UPDATE This page should have a link to the live video of the Olympic Trials, starting at 8pm eastern.

UPDATE 2 This page takes you straight to the video feed from Omaha. Go Elaine!

UPDATE 3 Elaine Breeden lowered the personal best she set this morning by recording a 2:07:33 in the second semifinal of the 200m butterfly. She'll take the top seed in tomorrow evening's final. Congrats, Elaine, and good luck tomorrow night!!

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.

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!).

Trials Update and Odd Olympic Events

This blog is about the selection process for the Olympic teams we hope to see win gold in Beijing this summer. For the four events we're going to, none of them have yet decided their full Olympic teams. We're a little over four months out from the opening ceremonies, and it may be surprising that we have relatively few people officially guaranteed a spot on the team, but it makes sense, because a lot can happen in a short period of time, and the United States wants to go to the Olympics with the team at its absolute peak. The second part is a listing of a few random Olympic games that we will not be watching, but which nonetheless caught my attention as interesting or odd.

Olympic Trials Update
For the swimming events, the Olympic trials will be held June 29 to July 6 in Omaha, Nebraska. For the athletic events, are held from June 27 to July 6 in Eugene, Oregon. Both will be huge events, coinciding nicely with the July 4 holiday weekend.

For the traithlon events, selection is slightly more complicated there are three events that will decide who goes to the Olympics:

• The Beijing ITU World Cup (completed last September), with Laura Bennett and Jarrod Shoemaker earning automatic bids
• The 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will be on April 19, and the top finisher will earn an automatic bid
• The The 2008 USA Team Selection Event in Des Moines, Iowa, will be in June, and will help decide the third at-large member of the US Olympic team

For the rowing events, it becomes even more complicated. Events are divided into "Big Boats" and "Small Boats," and then qualified and unqualified boats. All 6 big boats qualified at the World Championships last year in Munich, Germany, and their crews will be announced by late June. All but three of the small boats qualified as well. The three that did not qualify have another chance this June in Poznan, Poland. In order to get there there will be a trial in West Windsor, New Jersey in May. Trials for crews are a slightly complicated process of several trials, including the World Cup and one or two trials in New Jersey. In any case, the US Olympic rowing team will be known by the end of June.

Weird Olympic Events
Imagine devoting your life to training for an event or sport that no one has heard of. Well, here, in this obscure blog, I will share the limelight with (fittingly) obscure Olympic events:

1. Racewalking: It comes in men's 20km, men's 50km, and women's 20km. You are required to walk the entire distance (i.e., one foot must be on the ground at all times). The top 20 (out of 30) times for these events are held by people from either Russia (or the Soviet Union, since one time was recorded in 1989) or China.
2. Triple Jump: This event is exactly as it sounds: you jump three times without a start, and you see how far you can get. It's also known as "Hop, Step, and Jump." The father of former Ohio State basketball star Mike Conley, Jr. was a standout in this event.
   
3. Steeplechase: This event is running through an obstacle course. Training begins at Vacation Bible School.
4. Modern Pentathlon: It used to be javelin throwing, discus throwing, sprinting, and the long jump. But that was ancient times and we've moved beyond that to swimming, fencing, pistol shooting, cross-country running, and swimming. How...modern...and civilized! It's supposed to be based on abilities needed by soldiers. Perhaps the IOC should consider Humvee driving, machine gun firing, supersonic jet flying, night vision goggling, and target choosing. Or to make it more cost effective, borrow a playbook from the Navy SEAL training program.
   
5. Windsurfing: One question. How do you win windsurfing?
   
6. Table Tennis: The names of several Olympic gold medalists: Ryu Seung-Min, Chen Qi, Ma Lin, Zhang Yining, Wang Nan (in Athens). The only non-Chinese/Korean to win Olympic gold in this "sport" is Jan-Ove Waldner of Sweden. The Chinese have won 16 out of 20 gold medals since its inception in 1988. Behold! The great Chinese dynasty of...Ping Pong! Too bad this wasn't an Olympic event when Forrest Gump was around.
   
7. Beach Volleyball: The only reason why this gets airtime are well-toned (and tanned) athletes in skimpy bathing suits. No one cares about the sport*.

So come August, NBC will be airing converage of high-flying gynmasts, Michael Phelps (assuredly in both his events and during the commericial breaks), high-speed track races, and perhaps a couple slightly more obscure events. Look for hints of the previous 7 events. It's doubtful many Americans will medal in those events, but August will be the closest these events get to having national attention.

*I realize some people do care about this sport, and I apologize to you for the gross generalization.