Shanghai Night Three: Lochte Wins, Danmark over alle!

This pretty much sums up my feelings about Day 3 Finals

Let's start with the most important race first. She led from the opening gun, never looking back or letting her competitors smell victory. Lotte Friis pulled in gold for Denmark- the first of many (ok, maybe not quite). Don't you agree that was the most important race? Men's 200 free? Oh yeah, Lochte won. BORING. Let's run down some other highlights from night three:


Zhao Jing scored another huge win for the Chinese in the 100 backstroke. I missed this race, like the 200 free because stupid Universal Sports wouldn't load my damn video. No, I'm not bitter at all. I am filing an official dispute of the results because if I didn't see Natalie Coughlin lose with my own eyes, it didn't happen.

The women's 50 breaststroke featured outstanding swims from favorite Cameron Van Der Burgh and Felipe Silva. Van Der Burgh passes the "wife test", which means that my wife glanced at the screen, saw him and exclaimed "oooo, I like him!". She also said he has a great smile. I guess I deserve this after my comments about Pellegrini yesterday. Judge for yourself:

The men's 100 backstroke perfectly matched my photo caption from yesterday, with Stravius and Lacourt hugging each other like two Frenchmen sharing gold. 

The women's 200 free left me totally petrified for the US 800 free relay. I shared my concern with David Reider, who informs me that Dagny Knutson time trialed a 1:56.9. Now I feel better. If we can just throw Franklin on that relay with Knutson, Schmitt and Vollmer everything will be ok, right? RIGHT?

What is up with these imbalanced semi-finals? Yesterday the women's 100 back had two qualify out of one heat and six out of the other. Tonight's men's 200 fly had just one swimmer (Chen Yin) qualify out of the first heat and seven in the other!

Oh and Rebecca Soni won. No world record.