preamble: the chinese capitalised (er haha) on A: a known gift for fireworks, B: a known gift for people prettily running with flags, C: spectacular oriental spectacle, D: a population as numberless as the pixels in the ocean — and the Brits limp far behind on all counts; my suggestion is that we should make a virtue of necessity and scrobble our counter-spectacle up round the sense of grumpy, lumpy, stubborn, dry-witted, weird-crop SMALLNESS, the aesthetic legacy of a small crowded windy greenfield crag dropped into the north sea

hence my answer:

The figures

There’s no doubt that this was the fastest Olympics ever:

World records set: 25 (in 21/32 events)
Olympic records set: 65 (in 30/32 events)
World records set in the LZR Racer swimsuit: 92%
Gold medals set in the LZR Racer swimsuit: 94% (89% of ALL medals)

Here’s the swimming medals table (no. gold medals shown in brackets):

Well done us!

4th is a brilliant placing for Great Britain – three medals in one games is more than we’ve managed since the 80s, and to have two of them be gold, well, it’s absolutely brilliant. Rebecca Adlington broke a world record older than herself, and has automatically become an inspiration to every club swimmer grinding up and down the pool at 5am every morning.

As well as the medals, we also got a couple of 4th places and one or two swimmers in nearly every final – although you might think that’s not something to be particularly proud of, it shows how competitive we are compared to Sydney and Athens, and will make those swimmers who came in fourth even hungrier for medals next time round. Liam Tancock deserves a special mention for making three finals (backstroke, IM and medley relay), as does Fran Halsall who had a real chance to medal in the 50m free, the 100m free, the medley relay AND both freestyle relays. She looked so gutted after her last race (as well as absolutely exhausted).

Looking to the future – Rebecca and Fran are still teenagers, and at least half of the GB squad had never been to an Olympics before. In front of a home crowd, who knows what can happen in four years’ time? Hey, it took Michael Phelps two Olympics before he won gold…

America v Australia

On the whole, the non-Phelps favourites going into the games (e.g. Katie Hoff, Grant Hackett, Dara Torres) did pretty badly in terms of gold medals. Let’s find out just *how* badly they’ve done – in graphical format! Here’s the American and Australian gold medals since 1988:

Oh dear! The American women and the Australian men barely won anything this year! The Australian men failed to get a gold medal for the first time since 1976 – ouch. Where’s Ian Thorpe when you need him, eh? They were banking on Grant Hackett to deliver in the 1500m freestyle, and he just wasn’t up to the job this time. The American men obviously did pretty well thanks to SuperPhelps, and Stephanie Rice nabbed those vital medley wins to bump up the Australian women’s total from previous years. But we still can’t discount both AUS and USA’s enormous depth of talent. Here’s their total medals won since 1988:

Their overall team performances are still improving overall thanks to the demise of the Eastern European and Russian swimmers – the dip in Athens was mainly due to very strong showings from the Dutch, French and German swimmers. If Britain’s medal tally for the last twenty years was plotted on the same graph it would be lurking right at the bottom. We’ve still got a long way to go.

Tell you what though, the rest of the medals were really spread out – Brazil, Germany, South Korea, Zimbabwe and Tunisia all got golds thanks to sterling individual performances. France and China both got six medals each, and a whole bunch of European countries picked up silvers and bronzes. Swimming success is finally starting to be consistently found away from the American/Australian centres, and that’s got to be good news for anyone watching.

*Apart from the 10km open water races on Wednesday and Thursday of course – tune in and cheer on David Davies, Keri-Ann Payne and Cassie Patten.

Yun Ok-Hee here is modelling a PINK bow, and a cartoon panda chest guard!

I think I might take up archery!

Here’s a short clip of the last length. Katie Hoff (USA) is leading in lane 3, Adlington is in lane 5 (the upper yellow one). Look how Adlington suddenly zooms up from metres behind in the last 25m, and just touches out Hoff at the last inch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI6xrhef-fI

Awesome stuff. Her teammate Jo Jackson had a superb swim as well to nab the bronze, and together their efforts have definitely lifted the British squad’s spirits after a hesitant start. The men’s 4×100 freestyle relay team put in a sterling effort to make the final (they only decided to bother fielding a team at all at the very last minute), and came within a couple of tenths of a second of the previous world record set by the American B-team in Sunday’s heats. Yes, the B-team. The A-team (Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale, Cullen Jones and Jason Lezak) knocked another four seconds off it again in the final, which is a staggering time, but even without a clock the race itself was a joy to watch (BBC video link). Somehow Lezak caught up Alan Bernard, who must have thought he had it sewn up. You really feel sorry for the French, but it means that Phelps’ eight golds target is still on track.

So what else has been going on in the pool? Well, world records have been tumbling all over the shop and there have been plenty of upsets for the Americans who aren’t in a ‘Phelps’ event:

Men’s 400m freestyle: Tae Hwan Park (KOR)
Women’s 400m freestyle: Rebecca Adlington (GBR)
Men’s 100m breaststroke: Kosuke Kitajima (JPN) – World Record
Women’s 100m butterfly: Libby Trickett (AUS) – Olympic Record
Women’s 400m Individual Medley: Stephanie Rice (AUS) – World Record
Women’s 4×100 freestyle relay: Netherlands – Olympic Record

The Americans were pretty much favourites for all of these events except the 100m butterfly and certainly expected to win most of them. Hard luck! The rest of the world is finally catching up with the USA. :)

Coming up tomorrow we have Hannah Miley and Keri-Anne Payne going in the semi-finals of the 200m Individual Medley, Caitlin McClatchey and Jo Jackson in the 200m freestyle semis, and Gemma Spofforth and Liam Tancock in the women’s and men’s 100m backstroke finals respectively. In recent Olympiads it’s been a rare sight to see a Brit in the final for anything, but right now you can see the confidence dripping off the British swimmers – they no longer seem intimidated by having world record holders or multi-medallists in the lane next to them, and are knocking seconds off their best times (except Rebecca – in her post-victory interview the first coherent thing she said was ‘I’m a bit disappointed with my time”). You can tell that the trusty BBC commentary duo of Andy Jameson and Adrian Moorhouse are having trouble keeping their excitement to a professional level as they watch.

So by all rights Team GB should bag themselves a few more medals by the end of the week! Let’s hope your correspondent isn’t suffering too much from sleep deprivation to bring you all the latest poolside action…