Back-to-back CRAZINESSS!!!! Men's 200m freestyle relay, USA opened up a dominant lead, we were trailing by as much as 6-8 meters at one point. Then we started closing at the 3rd swimmer; Pan Zhanle, closed up from lagging >4m to lagging some 2m, still pretty difficult for the last guy. Then Zhang Zhanshuo came in for the anchor and immediately cut it down to 0.5 meters and there was big hope. Even in the last 50 meter turn, he was neck and neck with the American until about the last 20 meters when he pulled ahead by 0.2-0.3m. He came in for the gold medal touch and I didn't even realize that the Koreans were in the race too and overtook the Americans as well! Zhang out-touched his Korean rival by 0.1 seconds and the Americans, once leading everyone by heads and shoulders, settled for bronze!!
I am not stupid enough to blow out my arm again despite the total nailbiter of a race and I have gotten absolutely NO work done at the office. How could I?
And now, the medal tables has China at 22 gold medals and the US at 7. They are 15 behind with 14 events left. Game over, it's all entertainment now.
Edit: Analyzing the results, this is what happened. At first, it looked like Zhang Zhanshuo was the superhero... but he's not. His split time wasn't very fast; he was 3rd out of the 4 Chinese swimmers in speed. But he overtook the US team the hardest because Americans totally blew their wad on the first guys, putting their best swimmers first and their worst last. Pan Zhanle was China's strongest swimmer, faster than every teammate by at least 1.5 seconds, and the second fastest split time in the competition. He was 0.14 seconds slower, however, than the Korean 200m freestyle champ, who anchored his team and almost surged past everyone in the last few meters. Another 5-10m against him and we might have been toast.
