number 4 & 5!! un-fucking-believable!!! :)

men's 200m butterfly
gold - michael phelps (1:52.03 - WR)
silver - laszlo cseh (1:52.70)
bronze - takeshi matsuda (1:52.97)

seriuosly, i think we can all go on&on abt this man...bt in a nutshell - he's a bloody freak of nature!
it was an awesome race - as usual! he might not have shaved it off by much, bt he did it nonetheless..he dropped it from his previous WR of 1:52.07 which he set in melbourne in 2007.
here's the best part of the race - the top4 all set new records! cseh set a new european record; matsuda set a new asian record; and a special mention to the kiwi moss burmester who took 4th - not only is he the 1st kiwi since 1996 to appear in an olympic final, his time of 1:54.35 is a new oceania record!.....how awesome was this bloody race!!! :)

[excerpt from a feature story on the beijing2008 website]:

He is the classic wholesome all-American boy who, for an added twist of tension, even had the audacity to win the 200 meters Butterfly despite a goggle malfunction which affected his vision.

"When my goggles filled up there was nothing I could do. All I could do at that point was swim. I tried to see something at the 150 wall. I tried to see the T on the bottom to judge my turn. I was more or less trying to count my strokes, hoping I was dead on. I'm just disappointed because I know I can go faster than that."

women's 200m IM
gold - stephanie rice (2:08.45 - WR)
silver - kirsty coventry (2:08.59)
bronze - natalie coughlin (2:10.34)

i dont write enough abt the women as i do the men - go figure! :) bt this, this was a definate must-blog! :)
juz looking at those times, u can sure-as-hell tell tht it was a bloody awesome race!
the 1st 50m fly was led by katie hoff..and when breastroke was up, coventry definately caught-up big time! then it became almost a straight line...bt mostly, the fight was btwn rice and coventry - who btw, was absolutely brilliant and at times looked like SHE was gonna take the gold home! but in tht last 50m-free, you could see tht both rice and coventry were touching the green WR-line and because they were swimming side-by-side, it looked like it was a toss-up btwn the 2...
but in the end, rice touched 1st, smashing her previous WR of 2:08.92....like i said, a brilliant race -left you guessing till the very end! :)

men's 4x200m freestyle relay
gold - USA (6:58.56 - WR)
[michael phelps, ryan lochte, ricky berens, peter vanderkaay]
silver - russia (7:03.70 - ER)
[nikita lobintsev, evgeniy lagunov, danila izotov, alexander sukhorukov]
bronze - australia (7:04.98)
[patrick murphy, grant hackett, grant brits, nick frost]

with this race, it was definately the americans from the get-go!
phelps juz gave them tht HUGE lead - pretty much a whole body-length and UNDER the 200m free WR! the rest of team did NOT disappoint! they went on to lead the field and were 2 body-lengths in front of the green WR-line!!! and juz like jason lezak, vanderkaay - the 4th swimmer - definately brought it home!
it then pretty much became a race for silver! for most of the time, it was pretty much a tight-one btwn the aussies & the russians! at one point - with the 2nd swimmer - i saw a black body with a yellow-cap at the top of the tv-screen...for a second there i thought it was ian thorpe! turned out to be grant hackett - who i must say, didnt do too shabby a job...bt it irked me to see the black suit swimming slowly - it felt like ian was doing a crap job! :( and so, my personal thought is tht grant should STOP wearing the black suit for his other races and juz leave it for his forte - the 1500m...:)

back to the americans, like i said, i was juz in awe seeing them swim! it then for me became not juz a race to smash their previous WR, it became one where i was cheering them-on to hit sub-7mins! and they did it!!! they bloody-well obliterated their prev WR of 7:03.24 set in 2007! how can u not love them?!? how can u not juz stand-back in bloody amazement?!?

oh, and lets not forget, michael phelps has juz under an hour before, swam - and set a new WR - and won the men's 200m fly...:)

*men's 100m freestyle SEMIS*
i dont usually write abt the semis, bt this one sure deserves a special mention - go watch them, and u'll knw wht i mean...
with the 1st semi, alain bernard of france was definately out to reclaim his spot as the fastest - which the aussie eamon sullivan took over 2days ago when he set the new WR of 47.24...and he did! bernard - in semifinal 1, set a new WR of 47.20!!! and it was indeed a beautiful swim...
fast fwd a few minutes later to semifinal 2...here we see the likes of eamon sullivan and pieter van den hoogenband...lo-and-behold, eamon ups his game and further shaves off alain's WR! his new WR = 47.05!!!!

the finals will definately prove to be a spectacular race!!! :)