Olympic Results 2012: Youngsters Who Dominated Day 3 Action

With all due respect to Ryan Giggs, the Olympics are about youth. 

Sure, a veteran like the 38-year-old Team GB midfielder can be beneficial every so often, but as was showcased on Day 3 in London, it's the young blood taking home the medals. 

Let's take a look at the most impressive performances from the 20-and-unders on Monday. 

Multiple Swimmers

The pool, more than anything else, was absolutely dominated by the young guns on Day 3.

It started with the men's 200-meter freestyle, a race that contained the definition of a stacked field: Ryan Lochte—arguably the world's best all-around swimmer, Paul Biedermann—world champion and world record holder, Sun Yang—who had the best qualifying time and days earlier easily took home gold in the 400 free, and Park Taehwan—another world champion.

There were literally four or five guys who easily could have come in first, but in the end, it was the youngest of them all who took home gold: 20-year-old Yannick Agnel. 

Agnel led the entire race and pulled away in the last 50 meters with a ridiculous 25.98 split, which put him more than a second ahead of the entire field. That's something that doesn't happen too often in a 200-meter race.

It was the second gold in as many days for Agnel, and he continues to establish himself as one of the best young swimmers in the world. Don't look for him to be going away anytime soon. 

The ladies' pool was dominated by just even younger phenoms.

17-year-old Missy Franklin took home the gold in 100-meter backstroke, holding off world-record holder Emily Seebohm, while 15-year-old (yes, 15) Ruta Meilutyte won gold in the 100-meter breaststroke. 

Cao Yuan and Zhang Yanquan, China

China absolutely owns the diving world, and Cao and Zhang continued that dominance as they took home the gold in the men's synchronized 10-meter platform.

And it wasn't even close. 

Cao, 17, and Zhang, 18, racked up four perfect scores on the day en route to a total of 486.78 points.

By comparison, Mexico, the silver medalists, had just 468.90 points, and the United States, who took home bronze, had 463.47. Neither country had one perfect 10, let alone four. 

Considering they were the youngest combined duo in the finals, Cao and Zhang are scary good. Expect them to dominate the sport for a long time. 

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