selkie

I feel sorry for the employees at the Australian quarantine hotel where their rugby team ends up upon returning to the country. Apparently there was drunken destructive revelry from that team in both Olympic village and flight home after they finished play.

Unpopular opinion- the overly dramatic shoulders of Vanessa Ferrari were highly annoying during her floor routine. She just kept flinging them everywhere and anywhere in an attempt to show 'artistry'.

Erriyon Knight is very interesting for the 200M final- he's performed far beyond expectations and has nothing to lose. So might as well just try something crazy and see what happens. Los Angeles would be when a lot of male sprinters like him are in their peak years. Speaking of peak performance years, we could have a literal decade of Athing Mu vs. Keely Hodgkinson at the top of the 800M ranks if both stay relatively healthy and engaged and that would be a heck of a friendly rivalry.

I'm a sucker for Chevy's cat that thinks he's a dog ad

He was a 58.1 from a flying start in the relay. The usual conversion on that is about a 58.7 flat start. Given that he's gone 58.0/58.1 fro ma flat start earlier, his relay swim was indeed in that 'sucking less' realm compared to how badly it could have gone rather than swimming up to known ability.

Her partner (and presumably any children) have checked in safe in Ukraine on the way to Poland. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58052144

And congrats to Keni Harrison with silver who, despite turning in amazing times at meets that didn't matter so much, is only now getting over a reputation for choking on bigger stages. She's always been so talented and it's really good to see her mind stop getting in the way of her body.

It's interesting how the Chinese team gets infinitely more likable when Sun Yang is stuck at home playing on Weibo as he serves out his suspension. He's been this black cloud hanging over the rest of their program for years.

For assorted reasons, the 400M is on the weak side this Olympics, so Allyson Felix, even if she is part her prime, has as good a chance as any of the other women left standing. It's kind of low probability that she wins but not impossible.

There's probably a specific way of saying it that's supposed to be used at international events to make it really easy for non-English speakers to quickly identify the starter's commands.

There are two types of swimmers invited to the meet by FINA- those who qualify for an individual event and who are entered in said individual event by their federations and 'relay-only' swimmers. FINA says that if you bring a relay-only swimmer, you must give them an Olympic swim at some point (see the Aussies essentially having to use Leah Neale in the 4x200 finals in order to give her the required swim at the meet) But other than the relay-only swimmer restriction, there are no Olympic/FINA restrictions on how a country composes their relay squad and the official USA Swimming policy is that any given swimmer who qualified in an individual event may be offered a spot on any relay squad. The any given swimmer rule for US relays was most commonly invoked for Natalie Coughlin, who was #1 or #2 American in the 200 free but never swam that race at selection meet because it would conflict with the 100 back. So it was known that she'd always effectively time trial her way onto a finals swim in the 4x200 FR at some point at training camp. USA medley relay tradition is that the fastest swimmers in the 100 individual events get offered the final 4x100MR spots with some obvious tweaking if a Dressel or Coughlin or Phelps had been fastest in the 100 in multiple strokes, but that's tradition and not a written policy that it was how USA Swimmiing must do it.

It helps that track is the biggest deal sport there that every school kid wants to do well in- the equivalent of the high school national championships there is a crazy fast meet. The USA program has problems losing promising teenage runners to basketball/soccer/football.

In most sports, there's a huge performance disadvantage if the athlete doesn't go through conventional male cis puberty and the trans athlete isn't going to make it to the elite level in their correct male gender. Keelin Godsey held off on transitioning until after he made a good run at a spot on the US women's Olympic track team because he knew he'd never be able to 'catch up' with cis guys in his event. https://www.npr.org/2012/05/24/153589689/transgender-athlete-competes-for-olympic-spot G Ryan, who identifies as non-bianry competed as female at the University of Michigan because that's where their swimming sports scholarship was and also delayed top surgery until after their swimming career was over.

I'm finding myself humming 'Tradition!' from Fiddler on the Roof right now. Because I don't think that the USA relays have managed to avoid a DQ or three at any major meet of the 21st century.

The history of the underwater dolphin kick and the 'Berkhoff blastoff' rule- https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/the-history-of-the-underwater-dolphin-kick/

My gut says that when she walked off in the team event, she figuratively left her shoes on the mat at that point. (In wresting, it's the symbol that they're declaring retirement from the sport)

The thing is, the Andrews have actually had kind of an okay relationship with the rest of the swimming world until the past year or so. His Mom even was coach of a team in the ISL, which is about a month-long series of competitions with good prize money and brings together elite swimmers from around the world. The Andrews are not doing ISL this year and the official reason is that 'we're spending the time after the Olympics building Michael's brand in other ways' but back channel gossip suggests that it's because the ISL is very probably going to require a covid vaccination to participate this year. Rumor mill also says that the Andrews have become- how can I put this and have it be okay?- political conspiracy theorists and that's a group that can become really tiring when someone who does not share their worldview has to interact with them.

Russian swimming Has Issues. Yulia Effinova has served one doping ban and almost got hit with another one over meldonium and still swam in Tokyo. And a number of other swimmers implicated in the McLaren report like Vlad Morozov who were allowed to compete in Rio and Tokyo with FINA's blessing because FINA will gladly let anyone violate doping control policies and claim there was nothing they can do. (See also- how they claimed there was no way to punish Sun Yang after he assaulted a doping control official)

Dear sportswriters- yes multiple others already used 'Athing of beauty' so don't thing you've cleverly come up with that.

His freestyle is fine enough he just qualified for the semis in the 50M free. It's just that the training style he uses is only good enough to get him to the 175 mark in a 200 meter long course race. There's long been a desire by fans to have him try another coaching program for a time including sending him to Dave Salo, whose 'quality yardage' approach is pretty similar to what Andrew's doing now and with generally better results for swimmers but cult deprogramming is hard even when birth family isn't involved.

And the thing is, Caeleb Dressel would also describe himself as a strong Christian. And is hugely popular with his peers because it manifests as 'Today one of the goals is to try to be a decent human being. How can I make that happen?' rather than getting all vocally preachy. USA Swimming selects the head coaches for international teams about a year in advance. There are also a good number of assistant coaches that are selected based on the athletes they place onto the team, and for some reason known only to USAS, Peter Andrew got picked for an assistant gig, while Ron Aitken of Sandpipers, who put three women onto the team, did not. (Aitken did manage to get credentialed and on the pool deck in Tokyo, I guess USAS offered him a gig counting kickboards or something as part of the official delegation so he could be there for his distance women in the end)

Thrilled for Wang Shun, who has spent about a decade being the guy who was almost but not quite there at the end and was finally able to gut out a really big win tonight. He's seriously paid his dues in the sport.

8th place in the women's 800M heats in Rio- 8:25 8th place in the women's 800M heats in Tokyo- 8:20.5 Newcomers are making the event crazy-fast- the only Rio finalists who made the Tokyo final are Ledecky and Germany's Sarah Kohler. It'll be interesting to see how much everyone has left in the tank for the final. I get the feeling Ledecky swam for place rather than time and while there were probably a lot of swimmers all out to qualify, teenagers generally are quicker to recover than older athletes.

In retrospect, the Aussie coaching staff screwed up with relay composition- they left Mollie O’Callaghan and her 1:55.1 flat start off the finals squad and that could have been the difference. The problem was that they brought Leah Neale to the meet as a relay-only swimmer and the rules say that, in absence of proven injury or illness, you have to race any athletes brought for relay-only (it comes down to that they don't want an athlete who doesn't swim a race taking a quota spot away from an athlete who had a B time standard but didn't get an Olympic invitation) so they had to use her at some point in the meet. She actually overperformed compared to her Trials swim but was still significantly slower from a flying start than Mollie had been from a flat start in prelims.

Zhang Yufei had an amazing session to go so fast in the 200 fly and then come back for the relay.