My sister ran down the stairs and, upon seeing me, said, “What is wrong with you? I thought you were being murdered!” Writhing and shrieking on the floor, I could only point to the TV screen. Just seconds before, I believe I had witnessed the single greatest relay, if not all around, race in swimming history. For those of you who don’t enjoy the scent of chlorine on your skin, let me break it down for you.
France came in the heavy favorite despite the Americans taking the world record in the preliminaries. A day later, the French made waves saying that they were going “to smash them” meaning the Americans. Even retired, American gold medalist and former world record holder Rowdy Gaines said, “No matter how many times I break it down, I can only see the French winning.” It seemed like a silver effort for the usually golden team USA. And, to make matters worse, it was going to be the finale to a disappointing night for them anyway.
Brendan Hansen, a breastroker in the finest sense, ended his individual quest for Olympic gold with a fourth place finish in the 100 meter breastroke. Rumor has it, although he later said that he was not done with swimming, that that was his final individual Olympic race. It seemed setting his alarm clock to rival Kosuke Kitajima’s triumphant scream everyday was all for naught as Kitajima took the gold and Hansen didn’t even medal.
The so-called female version of Michael Phelps, Katie Hoff, took silver in the 400 meter freestyle. That would have normally been a fantastic result for the star-studded race if she hadn’t had a full body length lead on everyone going into the last 100.
Kirsty Coventry, of Zimbabwe, took down United States swimming’s poster child Natalie Coughlin’s world record in the semi-finals of the 100 backstroke. Hopefully Coughlin will be able to regain that record tomorrow but it still points to a disappointing night for the American swimmers.
And then to top it all off, the same downtrodden squad was supposed to lose a tough relay to come-out-of-nowhere France. For the record, any color medal that is not gold in his races will spoil Michael Phelps’ bid to beat Mark Spitz’s seven gold standard.
When Phelps jumped in as the leadoff in this relay, I only had one thought: get a lead. We need a least half a body length out of you because you’re possible our best hope. But he didn’t. He was just barely even with the Australian leader when they made the exchange. Now the rookie Benjamin Wildman-Tobriner was in the water, I could only pray that he could maintain the tie for first. When he finished, still slightly behind Australia, France made its move.
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