One Hundredth of a Second

The BBC website has a video titled 'Discovery of a new fish species.' I thought it was a spoof on Michael P but it's not; they really do seem to have discovered a new species.


Let's examine one one hundredth of a second. In 1988, at the Seoul Games, Adrian Moorhouse won the 100m breaststroke gold by 1/100th. after lying sixth at the 50m. I've watched the video hundreds of times and I still haven't seen him touch first. But he has the gold.

There's a film called One Hundredth of a Second but it's nothing to do with sport.

Light travels 1,156km or 1,860 miles in one one hundredth of a second.

Valerie's shot travels around 11cm.

Ursain Bolt (great name!) travels 10cm.

A relay swimmer travels 5cm off the blocks.

The Twins travel 4.7cm.

A butterfly swimmer travels 1.8cm into the touchpad.

A computer screen refreshes once.

That's how 'long' it takes.

The howstuffworks website defines it as:1 centisecond (one-hundredth of a second) - The length of time it takes for a stroke of lightning to strike.

Never give in, never; never; never; never.

“Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense” Winston Churchill, 29 October, 1941.

Watch incredible underwater video of the finish here.

This by email from Jerry Cosgrove at lactate.com:

'Phelps also must have inherited the lucky gene. He certainly needed it for the 4 x 100 free and the 100 fly. What are the odds of those two situations happening and favoring the same swimmer in the same meet?'

Points update

Women's 200 backstroke - the all-time top 10 average is now 1,034 and the across the board events completed so far is at 1,033.5

Men's 100 butterfly - the all-time top 10 average is now 1,036 and the across the board events completed so far is at 1,033.6

Women's 800 freestyle - the all-time top 10 average is now 1,019 and the across the board events completed so far is at 1,033.0

Men's 50 freestyle - the all-time top 10 average is now 1,055! and the across the board events completed so far is at 1,033.9

Women's 50 freestyle after the semi's - 1,043.

Second Man on the Moon

OMG!

What a finish.

To quote Mark Spitz when asked what it would be like if Michael Phelps won seven? 'Like the second man on the moon.'

Wait until tomorrow.

Of course, he didn't break the world record so, if the USA don't win the medley relay (DQ?) he won't really beat Spitz because Spitz had seven golds in seven world records.

Points update

Women's 50 freestyle after the heats - 1,043.

Men's 1,500 freestyel after the amazing heats (14:50 not good enough for the final!) - 1,019.

Women's 100 backstroke (1,050) and men's 100 backstroke (1,051) don't change after the heats of the medley relay which see NZL go through for the first time in Olympic relay history.

Olympic spirit

My favourite restaurant critic, AA Gill of the Sunday Times, has this to say:

'The Olympics are missing an element of frivolity. It's all too much sport and not enough games. They should bring back extinct events. Cricket, for instance. This was first contested olympically in Paris in 1900. The French team included TH Jordan, R Horne, H Terry, W Anderson, D Robinson, WT Attrill, W Browning, A McAvoy, P Tomalin and J Braid. The more astute of you will have noticed that these names are not typically French. The entire Frog team was made up of Englishmen. What greater evidence of the spirit of the ancient Olympiad, and our own innate fair play, than to actually field a team for the opposition because they're useless. The final was between Britain and France, and for the first and possibly last time in all the Olympic games, all 24 players (yes, it was a 12-a-side game) came from the same country. Britain won by 262 runs to 104.'

Medley Relay

I sent this to Tom on 9 August:

.... the real dark horse is the M4x100MR, I think they could go 3:33.5!

54.5
59.0
51.5
48.5

not quite right but pretty close, eh?

Better than my apparent prediction for the women's 200 breaststroke; according to Luke Clark I said Jones was 'unbeatable' and I'd never heard of Rebecca Soni! I need to study swimming some more :)