Five Records Shattered as USA Win 3 Golds

            The powerhouse on swimming dominated the men's 800m freestyle, men's 4x100m freestyle relay and women's 200m individual medley to surge onto the pole position of the swimming medaltally with four golds including the women's 4x100m freestyle relay won on Thursday. Five games records were shattered in six categories on Friday.

            The US domination began when Chad Eric Latourette touched the pool first in the men's 800m freestyle, timing 7:49.90 minutes, better than the previous record of 7:54.18 by Australian Grant Hackett in 2003. Russian Yury Prilukov, 7:50.49, took the silver  and  Sergiy Fesenko of Ukraine earned the bronze with 7:52.41.

            Kaitlin Shea Sandeno grabbed the US second gold of the day in the women's 200m individual medley with a new record of 2:12.13 minutes, beating the previous mark of 2:12.32 by Yana Klochkova of Ukraine four years ago. The Ukrainian meanwhile settled for the silver with 2:13.15, followed by Russian Svetlana Karpeeva, 2:14.37.

            The men's 4x100m freestyle relay squad rewrote their compatriots' record after clocking 3:16.06 minutes to steal the show. Joseph Gordon Doyle, Bryan Jackson Lundquist, Adam James Ritter and Michael Patrick Klueh co-ordinated to break the 12-year-old mark of 3:19.44 set by their countrymen in Fukuoka in 1995. Canada came a far second with 3:18.57 and Russia at third, 3:18.73.

            Japanese Aya Terakawa speeded to 28.61 seconds to win the women's 50m backstroke and collected the second gold medal for Japan. She also broke the record of Belarus 's Aliaksandra Herasimenia, 28.72, just set during the heat competition earlier. The Belarussian had to be content with the silver with a time of  28.70 and her countrywoman  Sviatlana Khakhlova timed  28.83 to finish third.

            The other new record of the evening was marked by German Britta Steffen after she spent 54.36 seconds to win the women's 100m freestyle. The German, who holds the world record of 53.30 in Budapest last year, bettered her own mark of 54.40 in the morning's qualifying session. The silver was taken by American Andrea Caroline Hupman, 55.36 and the bronze to Australian Alice Mills, 55.40.

            In the only non-record breaking of the day, Canadian Mackenzie Downing swam 58.88 seconds to grab the women's 100m butterfly gold medal with Russian  Irina Bespalova and Chinese Xu Yanwei following second and third with 59.02 and  59.22.

Lerpong Amsa-ngiam

The Nation