Swimming

Event Days: Days 1-8 (28 July-4 August) and days 13-14 (9-10 August)
Venue: London Aquatics Centre/The Serpentine, Hyde Park

From 50 metres to 10 kilometres and everything in between, discuss all things swimming here.

The critism of Leisel Jones across today's media is very harsh IMO.

She is there because she qualified fair and square, I don't think it's right to analyse her body shape so viciously and suggest she's unfit.

Must be quite hard for her, I wouldn't imagine it would be too fun to have pictures of your body plastered all over the papers and the web.

First Gold Medal for the girls in the 100m freestyle relay.

Saw that this morning, great effort.

On a different not Stephanie Rice seems all at sea at the moment. She seems to have a very negative mindset at the moment, perhaps she knows her shoulder isn't good enough to win.

Emily Seebohm broke the Olympic record in her 100 metre heat for backstroke earlier tonight in a time of 58.23, looking good for the final....the girl comes from good stock

i'll bet 'Seebs' would be a very proud man

She looked a class above, too.

The pool is turning into a bit of a graveyard this Olympics.

The naysayers said that we would see a decline in Australia's Olympic performances in correlation to the funding cuts that have been happening over the past few years, so far they are being proved correct.

I think we may only see 6 or 7 Golds total this time around. I hope I am wrong.

I'm not sure it's about funding?

They often seem to swim 'winning' times in the heats or semi-finals, but don't produce that in the finals.

Perhaps the weight of expectation that we all put on them to succeed has something to do with it.

Yes, I think expectation has a lot to do with it. My observation on funding was more about Olympic sports overall rather than just swimming.

I've been a little dissapointed by the focus on winning rather than competing so far. It was so good to see that young fella so ecstatic about winning silver a couple of days ago. It's a shame he's been surrounded by people sooking about lost Gold.

I know these people have invested so much of their lives in their sport and they are entitled to express their disappointment, but I find it sad when minor medals aren't regarded as success.

As you said r&b, maybe that says a lot about our thirst for sporting success as a nation and the pressure that we heap on these kids to win nothing less than Gold.

To quote Ricky Bobby: "If you ain't first, you're last!"

Seems to be the mentality of some of our athletes at the moment, what ever happened to the thrill of just being at the Olympics and representing your country with pride? I remember a time when athletes were proud to be known as an Olympian, regardless of whether you won a medal or not.

Modern society's quest for 'perfection' (whatever that is...) is the most stupid target we as human beings have ever set ourselves in the history of civilisation.

Agreed, GN and HTWWW.

That quote about "if you ain't first, you're last" and similar quotes are the cause of many of the problems in the world, IMO.

Ditto 'loser', etc, etc.

Too true, too true.

You just have to look at how the media are scrutinising the losses and making them out to be 'terrible failures' to see where the problem lies.

I hope we get an underdog victory soon so the media can focus on something positive rather digging up Magnussons under 10 coach for comment or whatever other ridiculous coverage they decide to concoct.

Well said HTWWW, couldn't have put it any better.