Relaxing after a long week in Melbourne
After a very long and challenging week and a half of swimming at the FINA world championships in Melbourne, I am spending a few days relaxing with my family in Sydney before I head back to the United States
I am very pleased with my meet; it’s always nice to end a season with best times. Overall our team swam out of their suits. I am sure that when the final tallies are in, it will go down as one of the most successful meets Team USA has ever competed in. At this meet there were seventeen American records and eleven world records broken. Eleven world records … I still can’t believe it! It seemed like every time an American was swimming the pool just lit on fire–truly remarkable. Watching people like Michael, Natalie and Katie break records is always exciting, but it was our “diamonds-in-the-rough” that really made the meet seem magical — people like Margaret Hoelzer and Leila Vaziri breaking American and World records. Watching Leila set a World record is one of those things that really gets you going. Leila has been swimming for 15 years and only now realized that the 50 backstroke is her event, after swimming it for the first time here at this meet!
I competed in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, the prelims of the 4×200 freestyle relay and the 50-meter freestyle. The 4×100 freestyle relay was really awesome. Natalie Coughlin led off, followed by Amanda Weir, Lacy Nymyer and me anchoring. We ended up breaking the American record and claiming the silver medal. The Aussie girls only touched us out by two tenths of a second, one of the closer relay races of the meet. I know I don’t speak only for myself when I say that it was great for us to get second. We have come a long way since taking second at the 2004 Athens Olympics and every time we race the Australians it gets closer and closer. I really believe that next year in Beijing we will bring home the gold and take that world record back!
The 4×200 freestyle relay was another great race for me. In the prelims of the relay we were behind by a good deal. Getting a low finish in a circle seeded heat is not a good thing if you plan on making it back top eight. I swam the third leg and knew there was a lot of pressure on me to catch up to the rest of the heat and secure our team a lane in the finals. I had the best split of my life and we ended up sneaking in to Lane 8 for the finals. Team USA went on to win with outside smoke and also smashed the World record!
After having two good solid swims on the relays I was really pumped to get going on my individual event. In prelims of the 50 freestyle I had a pretty good race and qualified as the top seed going into semi-finals with a solid time of 25.23. In international meets with prelims, semifinals and finals, you can count on everyone swimming faster each time they qualify for the next round of the event. Having qualified first going into semi’s, I was really excited for my next race. I did a life time best by almost 2 tenths of a second, 24.80 and qualified second going into the finals. For what turned out to be one of the fastest heats of the women’s 50 freestyle in history, I was pretty happy with my finish. I touched in a time of 24.83 — second best time ever and fifth place. I placed fifth in the 2004 Olympics in the 50 freestyle as well, so this wasn’t new territory for me. Although at the Olympics I swam a 25.00. I am an extremely competitive person, so naturally I am not satisfied with fifth place. I will most definitely be aiming for gold next year in Beijing.