heavens above schooling has actually gone and won the bronze in the 100fly in kazan! that is staggering! what is more, with 50.96 he is one of the very few men — if the swimswam researchers are right, only the 5th man ever — to break 51s in the textile era (joining ian crocker, michael phelps, laszlo cseh and chad le clos — who would have thought before last year that a 20-year-old from singapore would have his name up in lights with those stars?) and to put that in context, look at other ncaa swimmers around his age who are considered olympic likelies for team usa. tom shields who was the favourite for the bronze in kazan finished fourth in 51.06, and jack conger who took silver behind phelps (50.46) yesterday at the us nationals clocked 51.33.and of course, he now holds the asian record for two butterfly events, which means that at the next asian games they are going to have to take notice. (but they will — it’s in jakarta, and southeast asians have known of schooling since 2013. at his debut asian games in incheon last september however i remember the chinese commentators were absolutely clueless as to who he was (during his introduction all they could say was that he was from singapore, he was 19, his name was… [awkward pause here as they had to looked at their start list for the name] and then at the finish they were openly stunned that a non-japanese/non-chinese swimmer had won the gold and smashed the games record (listen to the chinese commentary — granted the east asians are the swimming powerhouses and that of course they wouldn’t care either about the commonwealth games nor southeast asian swimmers, but they didn’t even pay any attention to him during his gold medal race — nevermind that he was starting in lane four or that coming into the games with a time comfortably below the previous games record he must have been one of the top seeds for the event.)
although once again, i think it’s rather sad that the inverted attitude in singapore means that we have to have our best swimmer feel more relieved than happy after such a stupendous swim…
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird