2007 Nationals...in the books!

Wow...I mean WOW! Dara Torres is simply amazing!! Tonight at the spry age of 40 she broke her own American Record in the 50 freetsyle en route to winning her second national title of the meet. This brought to mind the fact that about 18 years ago Mark Spitz tried a comeback in his 40's. Let's just say that Spitz' comeback never really got off of the ground (READ: failed miserably). Dara is an amazingly gifted athlete who, right now at the age of 40, looks like a good bet to make her 5th Olympic Team. Oh, and her time tonight would be tied for the second fastest time in the world this year.

On a more local note, Erik Vendt broke a 20 year old meet record in the 800 free tonight. Vendt's time of 7:49.75 broke the previous meet record established in 1987 by Sean Killion. Simply put, Killion was the greatest swimmer to ever come out of South Jersey. Sean graduated from Cherry Hill West and went on to a great college career at Cal and was a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic Team. Sean was named the South Jersey Male High School Swimmer of the Century in 1999. Sean was a great role model for all of the younger swimmers (myself included) in South Jersey during the 1980's. Sean proved that great swimmers don't just come from California or Texas...they can come from South Jersey as well. As much as I love to see fast swimming, it was a little sad to see Sean's record broken.

The end of Senior Nationals means the beginning of Junior Nationals is on the horizon. Seven GCIT swimmers will be in action during the week. They have been training hard since the beginning of April for this meet and I am very optimistic heading into Monday's events.

Nationals after Day 4

What an amazing night at Nationals. The night ended on an intense note with Michael Phelps missing the world record in the 100 back by .03. He was second at the 50 but used the best underwater kick in the world to blast to a 1/2 bodylength lead and never looked back.

I spent the entire finals session next to Charlie Kennedy, head coach at Suburban. I did this for a number of reasons but mostly because I wanted to stand next to him when Brendan Hansen swam the 100 breastroke. Brendan is from Haverford, PA and swam for Charlie before attending college at the University of Texas (where he still trains). Brendan wasn't able to break his own world record in the race, but he blasted past the rest of the heat in the last 25 for the victory. Charlie had some great insight into Brendan's stroke rate and other aspects of his race which he shared with me. Its a chance like this to listen to some of the best coaches in the country (and Charlie is definitely in that group) discuss everything from stroke technique to team administration that makes attending Nationals a treat for me.

Nationals

Just finished up with the second day at Nationals and the swimming has been great to watch. Today ended with an almost World Record in the Men's 200 Backstroke by Michael Phelps. However the highlight of the night for me was watching Dara Torres win the Women's 100 Freestyle. Dara is 40 years old and has her sights set on making her 5th US Olympic Team (1984, 1988, 1992 and 2000 were the other years she was a member of the team). Simply amazing to watch her beat people half her age and who were not even born when she was in Los Angeles for the 1984 Games.