Day 3 finals - Proud to be an American
Tonights session was amazing! Completely over the top. 4 world records (3 by Americans), 1 American record, and another near world record. On one of the greatest nights in swimming history, the US team put up one incredible performance after another. The articles and stories about last night can tell you what happened, but Ill tell you that it was just absolutely electric to be here, especially if you were wearing the stars n stripes. Phelps 200 free started off the magical night for our team. Phelps held the American record at 1:45.20 and Thorpe held the World record at 1:44.06, which nobody had really ever come close to. And then Phelps drops more than a second off his best time and busts out a 1:43.86. In the immediate next race, Natalie Coughlin broke her own 100 back world record that she set more than 4 years ago. About 20 minutes later, Kate Ziegler gave Janet Evans’ 19-year-old world record in the 1500m free a close run, finishing with the 2nd fastest time in history, less than a second away from the oldest record in the books. As if there wasn’t enough excitement for one night, in the next two events, Aaron Peirsol breaks his world record in the 100 back, Katie Hoff breaks the American record in the 200 free, and then Federica Pellegrini from Italy breaks the world record in the 200 free!
The US National Team was off the hook on this historical night! With 5 more sessions of finals to go, our team is feeling the momentum and will look to continue the excitement for the rest of the meet.
The success has definitely not been limited to those record swims last night though. On the first two nights of the meet, we had 2 American records (Natalie’s 100 fly and the womens 4x100 free relay) and 3 World Champions (Brendan Hansen’s 100 brst, Katie Hoff’s 200 IM, and the men’s 4x100 free relay). We’ve also had lifetime best times by a number of our swimmers including Davis Tarwater, Peter Vanderkaay, Leila Vaziri, Dana Vollmer, and Tara Kirk.
The bottom line is that I wish you all could be here and experience this! The stadium is amazing to be at, and when the crowd gets loud, you can barely hear yourself think! It’s always an incredible honor to be a part of Team USA, and the way our team is performing should inspire and make everyone back home very proud.
So now I am officially a part of the Team USA bloggers. I feel like every team member is blogging this trip for some reason. The difference between me and everyone else though is that nobody knows who I am because I’m not a fast swimmer. But that’s ok because if there were a World Championship of Blogging, mine would break a World Record for…uh…something.
Wish you were here. Proud to be an American…
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