Swimgating Shanghai: Day 6

Before I say anything else- thank you for all those who joined Braden Keith AND THE ONE AND ONLY GARRETT MCCAFFREY and I yesterday for a live pre-meet show. We will be doing the same tonight at 8:30 pm et and we will commentate LIVE over finals at 6 am et on Friday.

I've now played this swimgating theme out far enough that I feel fairly ridiculous, almost like I am Brian Fantana trying to bring extra gravitas to a news story about a panda:



PANDA WATCH. Let's talk about Day 6 prelims:


The 50 free is up first, which means unfortunately there is one more chance we could see Cesar Cielo cry like a newborn infant. Hopefully, the fastest man in the world last year, Fred Bousquet will be up to the task. By the way is it any surprise there are 16 heats of this event at Worlds? What, the guy who earned the wild card for Rwanda wasn't up for the 400 IM?

Next up is the first round of the Swedish national event: women's 50 fly. I can't help but imagine that somewhere in southern Sweden, Anna-Karin Kammerling is watching this event with the same intense look she has in this picture, picturing herself winning:

Alshammar? More like Långsamhammar

One fly event on top of another comes with the men's 100 fly. Earlier this week I mentioned that a series of heats were held to determine 2nd and 3rd place in the women's breaststroke- I expect much the same in this event.

The 200 back will follow, which thankfully the US team actually managed to have Missy Franklin in from last summer. But seriously, picking the world team twelve months out who could have foreseen that any of our young swimmers would break out over that period of time?

The session concludes with two 800 meter preliminaries. One is the men's 4x200 relay, where the US has the two fastest guys and PVK looking pretty good. I'd say its a foregone conclusion who's winning that. The women's 800 will preview what I believe will be an awesome race between Rebecca Adlington and Lotte Friis. Will the year of the Danish swimmer continue? You'll have to tune in to find out.