Day 2 FINALS

Day 2 featured Trials rolling at a full event load after a full set of semi-Finals in Day 1.  Great racing, some drama, a full service Trials experience...

Women's 100FL: Vollmer!
No surprise, Dana Vollmer ran away with the 100FL with a third straight time under 57, which is an impressive set of performances.  The more exciting story from the women's 100FL was the race for the second spot.  Christine Magnuson, Nathalie Coughlin, Kathleen Hersey, and Elaine Breeden were the big names but it was a fantastic performance from upstart Claire Donahue out of lane 1 earning the second spot on the American team with a solid 57.57... no one else was under 58.

Men's 100BR:  Comeback Complete
In an interesting development, the fastest 100 breaststroker in the building in Omaha was not Brendan Hansen who won in 59.68 but rather Japanese breaststroke Jedi Kosuke Kitajima who was chilling out with horrible seats -- could someone at USA swimming not hooked Kitajima up with a deck pass??  Eric Shanteau claimed second in 1:00.15 and will head to his second Olympics.  It was too bad that young breaststroke upstart Kevin Cordes from the University of Arizona could not hold on over the final 25m... Cordes faded and finished 3rd and will have to wait another day to try and make his first Olympic team.

Women's 400FR:  Schmitty!
Hell yes, Allison Schmitt just shut everyone down in  the 400FR with a thoroughly dominant performance leading start to finish and posted a powerful 4:02.84.  Chloe Sutton went a strong 4:04.18 to claim the second Olympic team spot.  Aside from the utter dominance of Schmitt the equally compelling story coming out of the 400FR was the flopping of Katie Hoff who managed just a 4:13.08 and a 20th place finish.  Hoff's coach Paul Yetter ran damage control for Hoff excusing her performance on the basis that she's shown flu-like symptoms.  Rough luck for Hoff who is now a long shot to make the US Olympic team.

... in semis action...

Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps put on a show in their 200FR semi to no surprise but the 9th place finish of Peter Vanderkaay locked out the freestyler from the A-Final by just .03, which is a shame because at his best Vanderkaay is the third best American in the 200FR but those are the breaks of Trials where all mistakes are magnified by a factor of 1000.

Rebecca Soni and Jessica Hardy were 1-2 in the 100BR with Breeja Larson sitting in a competitive 3rd spot and ready to steal an Olympic birth should either Soni or Hardy slip up tonight.  Amanda Beard finished 10th and will be a spectator for tonight's A-Final.

The men's 100BK lost Lochte from it's field when he scratched following his prelim swim.  Matt Grevers is on fire right now posting a 52.90 in prelims and a 53.10 in semis to earn Lane 4 tonight.  David Plummer and Nick Thoman are 2nd and 3rd and tonight in the 100BK Final its 3 deserving swimmers but only 2 are going to get spots... rough.  Randall Bal, a long-time American national team backstroker finished 9th and is out of the A-Final.

Lastly, in the women's 100BK, so far it has been Missy Franklin and Rachel Bootsma leading the way, which is fascinating because Natalie Coughlin has not looked like she's going to climb passed the two rising teens.  Should Coughlin not be able to dig out a sub-59 performance tonight (she's only been 1:00.71 and 1:00.63 so far in heats and semis) then she's going to be on the outside looking in and running out of swims and opportunities to get herself onto the Olympic team, which is an incredible thought to fathom.