To explain how it worked, let's use the butterfly race as an example. The first butterfly race started out with 4 swimmers, one from each country. After the first race, the slowest swimmer was eliminated (taking 4th place). After a short rest break, the remaining three swimmers swam another race and eliminated the next slowest swimmer (who took 3rd place). After a short break, the remaining two swimmers raced for 1st and 2nd places.
These short races happened for all four events and the whole thing ended with the team relay where each swimmer swam his specialty. The Raia Rapida was televised live on the Globo channel so the event moved along at a quick clip.
The four U.S. representatives were David Plummer on the backstroke, Mike Alexandrov on the breast stroke, Giles Smith on the butterfly, and Anthony Ervin on the freestyle.
All four are super accomplished in their specialty but two of them jumped out at me:
Giles Smith is 23 and just won the gold in the 100m butterfly at the Pan-Am Games this summer in Toronto. After the awards ceremony, Giles made the day of a bunch of Brazilian fans who stood in the freezing cold rain to get autographs (it was 64 degrees which is like Antarctica for Cariocas) when he asked if he could take a selfie with them. 
Anthony Ervin is 34 and was the gold medalist in the 50m freestyle at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. He retired from swimming in 2004 but decided to return to the sport in 2011. In 2005 he sold his gold medal and donated the proceeds to UNICEF to help the tsunami victims in Asia. Super cool gesture and super nice guy. 
Unfortunately there was rain on my iPhone lens, but here's Jimmy with Anthony Ervin. 
No comments:
Post a Comment