Austin GP

[FrankyRinpoche]

So, first night of LCM finals at Austin are over. Quite interesting...

22.13 by cielo in the 50. Of course he's nowhere near is top form I guess but it still is quite a bit far from 21.64.
2.10.34 by Kukors in the 200 IM is pretty darn fast though. Hutchinson is really doing a great job over at FAST.
Coughlin is back for the first time since Beijing. She's doing pretty well so far for an "off-event" (if you can call the 100 fly an "off-event" for coughlin). Looking forward to see her in the 100 back!

[Iron]

Kukors impressive!!!!2.10 in the early season!
Cielo impressive too!How many guys do you know that puts 22.13 with ONE month training(after two-three weeks eating everything in his way!).Last year, he made 22.08 in his first competition.
Natalie looks damn good after her break.

[FrankyRinpoche]

Kukors is def impressive yeah...she just won the 400 IM as well and beat katie hoff! Probably the best race this evening was grevers...53.05...come ON dude! That's just freakishly fast. What was the world record before the shiny suits 52.9 or 52.5? Can't remember! And of course natalie smoked the 100 back women final...awesome!

[Iron]

Frank, we can do the first suited X non-suited TRUE comparison of the year!
Last year, Austin was the first Cielo competition with one month and a half of training.
Remenbering prelims are in yards!
50 free(prelims-final):
last year:
19.15-22.08
now:
19.43-22.13

100free(prelims-final):
last year:
42.95-48.92
now:
43.64-49.13

[FrankyRinpoche]

That is really interesting to see...Maybe we won't have to wait that long for sprinters to get down to 21 low 20 high in the 50 LCM. I'm also most amazed by grevers 100 back, soni's 200 breast (2.22.91 in she's only swimming one work out per day?! What the...)and of course Kukors 2.10.34. Now, if I'm not wrong Grevers and some other swimmers were shaved for that meet and maybe a little tapered. Even though, 53.0 and 2.10 are still very impressive. Does anybody know more about Cielo? I don't think he's enough trained to do a proper tapering. He did start training in january right?

[Iron]

Franky, cielo training started one week before he went to auburn(30 january), and he s totally unrested-unteapered.His next (half)taper will be only at brazillian panpacs trials.

Amazing rebecca swim!

[rednicolas]

I think with the new starting blocks we might actually just see less difference in the times for the sprints on the big stage compared to the races 100m and up. They get a lot of power of those new blocks and they're also still strong and there's only so much speed you can loose in a 50m if you're having a good race.

Also we can't ignore that swimming naturally got faster over the past few years. But I still think it will take some time for us to get back to those WR and probably more on the men's than on the women's side.